Running a Food Business
February 8, 2025 | Duration: 42 minutes
Course Description
This South Carolina Farm Bureau's 2025 Young Farmers & Ranchers (YF&R) Conference breakout session features Taylor Carey, Director of Processing at The 920 Company, who shares her extensive experience in the meat industry and provides insights into running a small food business. She emphasizes the importance of resilience and collaboration in small food businesses, noting that each business has unique challenges and perspectives. Key topics covered include business planning, inspection and regulations, customer experiences, and creating value. Carey highlights the necessity of a dynamic business plan that evolves through trial and error, understanding local, state, and federal regulations, maintaining transparency and good relationships with inspectors, and ensuring food safety and wholesomeness. She also discusses identifying and understanding the target audience, building a community through engaging with customers across various channels, and establishing a system for customer relationship management. Additionally, Carey explains how to be creative while maintaining consistency, knowing customers well enough to provide added value, and ensuring sustainability and longevity through repeatability. The session includes an interactive Q&A where participants ask questions about business planning, financial planning, market changes, and customer engagement, with Carey providing practical advice based on her experiences. The four major learning objectives from the session are effective business planning, navigating inspection and regulations, enhancing customer experiences, and creating and sustaining value, offering a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to start or improve a small food business.
Learning Objectives
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Effective Business Planning
- Learn how to create and continuously refine a business plan.
- Understand the importance of research, crowdsourcing, and formalizing the plan.
- Gain insights into financial planning and securing funding.
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Navigating Inspection and Regulations
- Understand the various levels of regulations (local, state, federal) and their implications.
- Learn how to maintain transparency and build positive relationships with inspectors.
- Gain knowledge on ensuring food safety and compliance.
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Enhancing Customer Experiences
- Learn strategies for identifying and understanding the target audience.
- Discover ways to build a community and engage with customers both in-person and online.
- Understand the importance of customer relationship management systems.
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Creating and Sustaining Value
- Learn how to be creative in adding value to products and services.
- Understand the significance of consistency and repeatability in business operations.
- Gain insights into maintaining sustainability and longevity in a small food business.
Credit Hours
This course does not include continuing educational credits.
Pricing
Member Price - Free | Non-member - $0
Presenters
Taylor Carey
As the Director of Processing at a small, regionalized meat processing facility, Taylor oversees the production of USDA-inspected meat products for both in-house branded products as well as products for other producers. Prior to joining the Nine Twenty team, Taylor served a meat inspection supervisor for the Georgia Department of Agriculture and a meat technician at the University of Georgia. She has traveled the world and acquired a unique perspective on agriculture and the meat industry. Taylor leads the Nine Twenty Company Processing Division in their pursuit of creating a more resilient, connected, and prosperous local food supply system.