WHEN I STARTED SELLING GINGER BEER TO PEOPLE IN 2009, I WAS CLUELESS.

I had a plan, of course I did, but no experience. Just an idea to make old school ginger beer and sell it to the people of Auckland. Hopefully make a living from it. There didn’t seem to be any way to find out if it would work except by doing it. I’ve learnt a lot since then, both from our own trials and successes, and from all the people we work with.

This “Beginners Toolkit” is everything I wish I’d known back then – useful stuff like what kind of food licence I needed, where to get bottles from, and how much should I be selling my goods for.

There are more programs out there that will help you grow your idea further – such as The Foodbowl – but they require you to have taken your idea at least as far as trialling it at a local market.

The ‘first rung of the ladder’ for starting a food business is all right here, and the Grey Lynn Farmers Market will help you take that first step.

HANDS-DOWN THE BEST MARKET RESEARCH

comes from manning a stand at a farmers market selling your wares.

Whatever your food business idea is, you’ll get invaluable real-world feedback from giving samples to people, and soaking up their reactions.

The Grey Lynn Farmers Market actively encourages start-ups. We offer short-term stall hires, experienced advice, and brilliant networking opportunities.

For 2 years we delivered all the information here in 5 seminars, honing the course to meet the needs of people with brand new ideas, and people with existing businesses who needed to fill some knowledge gaps.

Now we’ve made it shareable and accessible for everyone in Aotearoa on this site. If you are finding this interesting and helpful, we’d love you to publish a link on your social media too.

MARKET BUSINESS MODELS

THERE ARE LOTS OF DIFFERENT BUSINESS MODELS  TO SEE IN ACTION AT THE FARMERS MARKET

MAIN OUTLET

The BioVG produce stand is an excellent example of this model. The majority of sales are at weekend markets. Edward grows his produce traditionallly and is organically certified.

Carl of Natures Corner is another excellent example. Again his eggs are competitively priced and spankingly fresh, and also Carl can personally attest to the fine health of his happy hens

By selling direct and cutting out the middle man, the consumer gets fresher goods, and these vendors gets more money for their produce than they would if they were selling it to a shop or supermarket.

LOCAL BUSINESS SELLING DIRECT

Jersey Girls Organics sell their superb A2 organically certified milk at weekend markets, and also wholesale to Farro and other specialty food stores.

John needs the extra income from selling direct to the consumer, and he also wants to build solid brand loyalty for the retailers they supply.

ONE INCOME STREAM, NOT A WHOLE LIVING

There are plenty of stall-holders who are working for supplementary income. A side-hustle if you will.

Lulu’s Tonics is a good example of this – Lulu supplements the family income with her weekend market sales.

PRODUCT & BRAND DEVELOPMENT

Hakanoa is one example of this. We started out making good old fashioned ginger beers that exploded if not kept cold enough and consumed quickly enough. Not a great business model for Auckland with it’s frequent wet weather and vast physical extent. While we were trying to sort that out, and so I could sell something when it was raining, I made a Ginger Syrup. A few months later the market barista, who had become a mentor to me quite by accident, suggested I make a Chai concentrate. Now we supply our premium cafe range of 11 concentrates to over 400 cafes around Aotearoa, as well as through Farro and Moore Wilsons.

JUST DON’T MAKE ANYONE SICK.

ENROL IN A ONE-DAY FOOD SAFETY COURSE FIRST AND FOREMOST.

Ask the internet for a Food Safety Course and you will see multiple options for these, all good.

Food Safety Laws can look scary and huge, but that’s because they have to cover a lot of ground. The main thrust of ALL of them is to prevent pathogens (bugs that make everyone sick) and allergens (foods that make just some people sick) from making people ill or worse, killing them. There’s a bunch of stuff around what you can and cannot say on your product labels too, but not causing harm is really the big concern.

It’s a huge act of trust, eating food. We all do it, several times day. There is a lot of room for nasties to get into food production and cause harm. Therefore all food producers have to prove they are taking all the necessary measures that stop the nasties.

Not just once, they must keep regular a record showing all those measures have been taken, proving that they are worthy of our trust.

Botulism, Salmonella, Anaphylactic shock caused by a nut allergy – these are all pretty grim and thanks entirely to our Food Safety laws, pretty rare.

TO FIND OUT WHICH SPECIFIC FOOD SAFETY RULES YOUR BUSINESS NEED TO FOLLOW, START HERE ON THE MPI WEBSITE 

YOU WILL NEED A FOOD CONTROL PLAN.

MPI HAS TEMPLATE FCP’S (FOOD CONTROL PLANS) FOR THE MOST COMMON TYPES OF FOOD PRODUCTION. 

IF YOU NEED TO GET A SPECIAL FCP MADE FOR YOUR PRODUCT, ASSURED FOOD SAFETY ARE VERY GOOD. 

PRIMARY PRODUCERS – PLANT BASED

Vegetables, fruit, and seedlings.

You fall under National Program 1 and a local ‘verifier’ needs to check that you are following safe practices before you can register for NP1. Your local council will have a list of verifiers and will issue the registration once you’ve ticked all the boxes.

If you want to label your produce ‘organic’ you must have a certificate to prove it. These can be issued by various bodies but for plants BioGro is the gold standard in NZ.

PRIMARY PRODUCERS – ANIMAL BASED

Eggs, honey, meat, fish, cheese & milk.

These producers have to run a Risk Management Program. That’s because pathogens can reproduce really easily in these foods if not managed carefully. Producers and vendors have to take a lot of extra steps and use a lot of extra resources to keep consumers safe. MPI runs the RMP’S (Risk Management Programs) for production, and your local council issues NP2 or NP3 licences for the vendor.

SECONDARY PRODUCERS – TAKE HOME FOOD

Breads, pastries, dry goods, jams, cordials, and water-based ices. All deemed  low risk.

These producers need a National Program 2 registration. For instance if you make jam, your Food Safety Plan will include all the steps you take to kill those pathogens like bringing the jam to a boil, and putting it in clean sterilized jars, and putting the lid on while it’s still really hot. These producers must follow those steps in a commercially licensed kitchen.

HACCP = Hazard Assessment and Risk Management Program. This will be specific to what you are making. Your recipe will converted into a step-by-step “Process Flow’. The steps in your recipe that are required to kill or prevent pathogens will be labelled a CCP or Critical Control Point.  If you are making jam, the main CCP’s will be getting it hot enough to kill pathogens, and keeping it hot enough when it’s going into the jars to kill any pathogens in the jar itself, and the ones present in the air between the top of the jam and the lid.

SECONDARY PRODUCERS – FOOD VENDORS

Coffee carts, food trucks, dumpling – basically anything served fresh to be eaten or drunk on the spot.

These producers have their NP1 or NP2 licence issued by the local council, who also licence all permanent food vendors like restaurants and cafes.

USE SOMEONE ELSE’S KITCHEN

Your local cafe after it’s closed? The neighbourhood bistro? They might be glad of the extra earnings, as long as you know how to leave it properly clean.

Also check out your local Marae, sports club, and RSC or RSA.

Ask around at the market, some of the stall-holders might have extra capacity in their own kitchen.

There are places for hire on at the Kitchen Collective too.

If you want to go properly big scale, contract manufacturing is your first option. It will be like learning to cook all over again – cos 1000 times your kitchen recipe will not make the same goods, trust me! – and you will want the expertise a contract manufacturer can offer. They won’t want to talk to you until you’ve got a market-proven product that you have already made and sold.

Hakanoa doesn’t own a production facility. We don’t make enough ginger beer to own an entire brewery and bottling line. There are 140 soft drink brands in NZ and less than a dozen bottling lines. We brew with a cider maker in Te Puna and send the brew down the road to a bottler in Tauranga.  We cook and bottle our concentrates at Wild Appetite in Auckland.

THE FOODBOWL This is a development facility – it has a lot of production space and all sorts of equipment but it’s not generally cost-effective to manufacture there. It can be used for production in some circumstances but you will need to be pretty established first. If you have an idea that you have already tested at market and want to learn how to make at large scale, you’ll learn how to do that. Grants are available if you are aimed at the export market, but you will always need to stump up at least half of the cost. This is where we established the perfect pasteurisation criteria for our ginger beer.

OR CONSIDER GET YOUR OWN KITCHEN LICENCED

Councils are recognising that some home kitchens are made well enough, or could be modified, to meet standards of commercial production.

They’ll be looking for good ventilation, crack-free flooring and work surfaces and a daily written record of your cleaning regime at minimum. Assured Food Safety have the skills to advise you on what’s needed based on what you are producing. Councils can and will still come up with more things for you to do, but they’ll be much happier that you’ve taken professional advice first.

WHAT DOES THE GLFM MARKET MANAGER NEED FROM YOU?

Local councils send their food safety inspectors to venues to check that people are following the rules, and they don’t give you any warning!

if they find a breaches, the stall holder could be closed down on the spot.  If they find many breaches, they may close the whole market.

Food vendors – anyone serving food or drink to be consumed on the spot are required by law to display there council-issued registration. Those are the ones that you hope say A on them when you are buying a hot snack from a stand 🙂

All other stall holders provide the relevant registration when applying for a stall, and updated registration is supplied every year to keep on file.

Every stall holder at the market has got over all these hurdles. You can do it too. If you are not sure where to start, we will help you figure it out.