How to open your own healing foods cart for $5,000 and up

Yesterday, at Sunday's Learning to Live in America Fair in Sacramento's Southside Park, information vendors showed guests where to learn how to start their own food businesses one step at a time and how to find the money. Have you ever dreamed of opening a healing foods cart of your own?

Instead of the usual fast-food/ethnic food carts, how about a food as medicine cart full of fresh green vegetable juices, raw vegetable/vegan purees spread on sprouted whole-grain bread baked without yeast, and special salads? Why not offer frozen desserts made with pureed quinoa, amaranth, cashews, almonds, carob, and agave nectar?

Are you tired of the standard fast-food carts, restaurants, or fast-food available in your area? Then you might enroll in the five-month Kitchen Incubator course sponsored by Opening Doors Inc, the nonprofit association that hosted Sunday, September 20th's Learning to Live in America Opportunity Fair that gave advice to immigrants on how to live in America, including how to open your own restaurant, or start on a smaller scale with your own food cart.

Locally, in Sacramento, there's Opening Doors Inc. located at 2118 K St, Sacramento, CA 95816. Also see: "Lender Joins SBA Microloan program." Opening Doors Inc. offers services to low-income individuals, immigrants, and refugees providing resettlement to newly arrived refugee families and business development assistance to those individuals that sought self-sufficiency through self-employment.

Also, Abriendo Puertas is dedicated to assisting Sacramento area Hispanic community members who wish to own or start small businesses. Open Doors Inc. also serves peoples of all national and ethnic origins that are low income, immigrant, or refugee in the Sacramento area. Opening Doors Inc. also has radio programs in Spanish: 105.5FM Friday Mornings: 9:00am join your friend Roxana Calderon, Russian: 1690 AM Monday Afternoons: 5:15pm “Big Talk about Small Business” and Hmong: 1430 AM Friday Mornings: 10:00am KJAY

If you love to cook, and are just plain tired of the food faire you see around you, perhaps a course focusing on the business end of owning your own food cart and eventually a restaurant might be of interest. You could learn food preparation from a chef willing to teach you. But the idea is to pick the chef who cooks the type of food you want to cook.

You'll also need to learn the business end such as sanitation and quality control of whatever food you cook, licensing requirements, bookkeeping and payroll if you have hired help, how to plan menus, how to obtain permits, and how to advertise.

You could start with a $5,000 investment for a food cart, but that's just the beginning. It will probably cost you more like $10,000 for a gas grill with a canopy, pans, coolers, food warmers, and a business license that costs around $1,000 for food preparation. Then there's the expense of a county health department permit, and insurance. But first you have to learn how to design your own business plan.

What kind of income can you earn with your own food cart? It will vary, but if you teach others how to set up their own food carts or small restaurants, you can earn tuition from them of about $500 per person for a course that runs five months. If you get business from church functions, it's possible to earn around $600 weekly.

To read about someone who trains others to start food businesses--food carts or restaurants, check out the article, "Start-your-own-restaurant advice dished out at immigrant fair," by Stephen Magagnini, published in the Sacramento Bee, Monday, September 21, 2009. Do you want to cook healing foods, ethnic foods, or fast foods?

Read more about the 42 graduates of the three Kitchen Incubator classes. If you decide you'd rather work in a restaurant, eventually as a manager, at least you'd be trained in the business end of running your own food establishment. You could start at the level of owning or renting your own food cart. You need to learn whether your business plan actually works in reality.

Maybe you have a dream of opening a community kitchen to help people who don't have the money to open their own commercial kitchens. If so, think about whether there might be a demand for healing foods rather than the similar fast foods already found in most neighborhoods.

It's wise to learn about bank loans and how to help others without credit or savings. Find out how the federal government backs up to 80 percent of some bank loans. Learn how much to put down in cash, how to find a good location, and what it takes to open a small restaurant or a food cart in a busy shopping mall.

There are Kitchen Incubators (shared commercial kitchens) in other states and other countries. For examples in other states, see the article, "Welcome to Kitchen Incubator | A shared-use commercial kitchen." Also see: "Kitchen Incubator Creates New Careers." There are numerous articles on how shared commercial kitchens help others learn how to cook and sell their unique food because you can't cook food at home and then sell it to the public. Read, "Local Growers Guild | Bloomington Kitchen Incubator." Also check out the article, "Entrepreneurs learn business of food at Can-Do Incubator‎."

In the article, "Entrepreneurs learn business of food at Can-Do Incubator‎," the Michigan women "found a way to turn their tasty granola into a growing business with the help of the Can-Do Incubator Kitchen, which provides new food entrepreneurs a place and the training to develop and test their food products for market demand." Located in the First Baptist Church, 315 W. Michigan Ave., the test kitchen is a program of Fair Food Matters, a Kalamazoo, Michigan group that advocates for locally grown food.

Photo credits: Flickr.com.