How to Start a Food Business: A General Overview

Delivered by Michael Wolfson, the City of Toronto’s Food & Beverage Sector Specialist, this webinar will show you the practical steps to take to develop your food business in Toronto. You will learn about evaluating your food business idea; finding a market and opportunities for your food products and/or services; planning, funding, and branding your food business effectively and why that matters; understanding pricing and how channels of distribution can have a serious impact; finding commercial kitchens in Toronto; and what you should do and know before you launch your small business. By the end of this presentation, you will be prepared with the knowledge and resources to start your own food business.

What you will learn:

• Where do I find customers for my food business?

• What’s a SWOT analysis? Why do I need to do that?

• Where can I get funding for my food business?

• Where can I find a commercial kitchen in Toronto?

• Where do I find equipment and ingredients to run my food business?

• How do I find someone to package and label my food correctly?

• What licensing and regulatory requirements apply to food businesses?

• Why does my logo matter?

• Why do I need insurance to run a food business?

• How do I make sure I’m setting my price high enough to make money and still be competitive?

• What’s a food incubator? Why might that help my food business?

Join us to learn all about how to start a food business.

Speaker Bio:

Michael Wolfson is the Senior Advisor for the Food & Beverage Sector for the City of Toronto’s Economic Development and Culture Division. Michael has created a 40-year career out of his passion for culinary arts and business. For 20 years, Michael supported and drove new product development, sales, and marketing for a number of natural foods manufacturers and distributors. In his current role, Michael champions industry-wide initiatives, such as developing export opportunities for Ontario food processors located in the Toronto region, creating labour force training for this sector, incubation and commercialization of new products, and assisting food processors of all sizes in Toronto to grow their operations.

Michael has participated on the Greater Toronto Agricultural Action Committee, Ontario Culinary Tourism Steering Committee, the Toronto Enviro-food Working Group, the City of Toronto Food Strategy Steering Committee, the Board of the Toronto Food Business Incubator and later Food Starter, the Advisory Committee for the Toronto Local Food Procurement Policy, and served as an advisor for the Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Action Committee. He is a graduate of both York University and George Brown College.

If you require accommodation, please notify us by email at least 4 weeks before the event date at etoronto@toronto.ca. To cancel the accommodation, we require 5 business days’ notice before the event date.

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