All food manufacturing businesses – from small, local, and family-run cake and bake shops to large countrywide producers – are legally required to follow increasingly stricter rules and regulations regarding health and safety.
However, simply satisfying all legal demands does not automatically guarantee a profitable and successful company and with this in mind, continue reading to discover four points to be aware of when running a food manufacturing business.
1. Be an Efficient Manager
Even though, upon first read, this first piece of advice appears to be somewhat simplistic, the truth is that taking an objective and detailed look at your current management style, both in terms of how you interact with your employees and how you run the company, is a process that you have probably never undertaken before.
Open and honest communication, as well as installing the core business values and ethos of your company into clients and employees alike, lies at the heart of all effective management. Always aim to make each one-to-one meeting with your senior heads of department matter and count, and be sure to always keep on top of the latest innovations in the food and beverage industry.
2. Always Be On the Lookout for New Sales Opportunities
For those food and beverage manufacturing companies who are fortunate enough to be in a strong position in terms of their regular, bulk-ordering clients, it tends to be less of a priority to seek out new and profitable additional sales opportunities.
However, growth and expansion are key to longevity and as such, you need to start actively searching out new avenues in order to improve your food business, including the following to name just a few:
- Seek to improve and strengthen relationships with suppliers
- Work on heightening the average value of each and every order
- Look for ways to fight against the rising cost of energy usage
3. Hire Professional Cleaning Equipment
Even if you have completed numerous courses and training courses on how to thoroughly sanitize and clean each and every item of equipment used throughout the manufacturing process, professional equipment cleaners will always be superior.
From cleaning your heat exchanger to your ovens and other electrical items, cleaning and maintenance are both top priorities – both for the health and safety standards of the products you make and sell and also for the smooth-running of the machinery.
4. Dead Stock is a Money Drain
The timely and efficient management of perishable food and liquid products is a process that is entirely unique to your industry and as such, the balance between overstocking your inventory and understocking becomes an important one to define.
This is why (if you have not already upgraded your systems to such a framework) it is strongly advisable to use BI (business intelligence) to better manage your stock levels. BI is an efficient and effective method of identifying those items that are either slow to move or simply do not sell, which will then allow you to devise a manufacturing plan to avoid such items turning into dead stock.
