Mexican Restaurant Menu and Flyers

How to Start a Mexican Food Business (5 Steps)

If you have plans to use the templates above, you must be considering starting your Mexican-themed food business (be it a restaurant, small shop, or just a stall in the corner). Cooking the food is the easy part as their dishes don’t usually require dozens of ingredients. Just remember that Mexican food is never complete without some tongue-burning spices. The difficult part is making sure the food sells and the business runs for as long as it can. A number of factors need to be considered and listed below are some things to remember when you want start your own Mexican-themed food business.

• Step 1: Mind the competition

  Mexican food shops are practically everywhere. Every street, city, or even country you go most likely has a place which sells Mexican food. Before you start your food business, scout the competition within your city or area and take a look at what they sell. Visit each place and go with a few friends so you can get to see a clear picture of their menu and see which dishes are selling fast.

  This is a common tactic used by companies to study each other’s products all the time. Company A sends a “mystery shopper or investor” to company B. That “shopper” then buys products or asks some product-specific questions of the sales personnel or management group and brings back that information to his own company. This strategy is not only highly used in the gadget and retail industry, but also in financial and technical services.

  The data you gather must be used when making a comprehensive analysis on the competition. This can help you visualize what concepts and dishes to sell in your own business so you can stand out against the competition.

• Step 2: Have a unique concept

  Speaking of standing out, have something in your menu which will make you distinct from other restaurants selling Mexican food. Go inside Mexican-themed restaurants and you’ll notice that they are all selling the same dishes. Some restaurants don’t even stick to an all-Mexican menu and serve some other dishes as well. At this rate, startups don’t stand a chance against the big players. But don’t let this discourage you. The market is never saturated enough and you can always find ways to sell your product. All you need is a great idea.

  Having a new dish is not the only way to differentiate yourself from the competition. Offering meal coupons or big discounts, combining certain dishes and offering them as a single discount meal (for example, a taco and salad with a drink meal) or serving unlimited burritos once a week will already attract the attention of potential customers. Additionally, serving special drinks on select days are also good alternatives. These days, serving good food is never enough due to the rate of restaurants setting up shop. Have a unique concept so you can use it to your advantage to keep the business running.

• Step 3: Fusion dishes are good alternatives

  Serving fusion dishes are good alternatives when setting up a Mexican-themed food business. This is also a good way to differentiate yourself from the competition. Combine Mexican classics with local or other dishes to give customers a unique yet appetizing take on Mexican cuisine.

  The potential of Mexican fusion restaurants has not been fully tapped yet. This is due in part to customers not wanting to try eating Mexican flavors mixed with other ingredients. They are already very delicious to begin with and adding other ingredients might mess up the entire dish. It is better to experiment with ingredients first and offer tasting sessions to family or friends and get their reactions. Additionally, offering tasting sessions in malls, schools, and other public places is a good way to market the business and start creating a customer base.

  Some delicious Mexican fusion dishes you might want to consider incorporating in your menu are Mexican ravioli, spaghetti tacos, Korean tacos, chicken and spinach tortillas, roasted vegetable enchiladas, and sweet potato quesadillas.

• Step 4: Marketing is key

  Marketing is always needed for any business. It disperses information about your product and makes people aware you are selling something. Marketing is sometimes undervalued since it doesn’t produce the best results all the time. Business owners tend to revert back to traditional marketing methods like posting photocopied flyers on electric posts and walls if they see that using modern marketing strategies don’t boost the sales of their products. Marketing is also not cheap and will take a chunk of your profits just to present your products to the general public.

  Business owners need to understand that marketing is a powerful tool that can bring much needed exposure to the business, and eventually an increase in sales. There is always a risk that comes with marketing, but if done right, it can easily bring down the competition. This is especially true for any food business since competition in the food restaurant industry is very tough.

  Some of the common yet effective marketing methods you can use for the food business are: creating a social media page or website to post promos/discounts and images of your dishes, being a sponsor for a public event, making radio or video commercials and broadcasting them on different platforms, printing tarpaulins and posters, and doing market research (target market, goals, budget, communications to use, etc.).

• Step 5: Find possible investors

  Even the highest earning corporations in the world need investors to continually run their operations and expand into new industries. Find investors for your own Mexican-inspired restaurant for the same reasons: continuous business operation and possible future expansion. Investors are as important as the management in any company. Most of the time, they are persons (angel investors, venture capitalists, etc.) and institutions (banks, lending institutions, etc.) who are not connected to your company but see potential in the business you are trying to run. Since the restaurant industry is a tough industry to crack, use investors to your advantage and assure them your idea is good enough so you and the investor will be gaining a profit from it.

  Although most investors just provide the funds and wait for you to pay them together with the interest once the agreement ends, there are also investors who want to be part of the company. Do some analysis first on which type of investor you want for your business. Make sure things are clear especially with the payment terms.