Over the last nine months, The Business of Food has been offering a "Starting a Food Business" workshop in several locations in the western suburbs of Chicago. The workshops have been consistently well-attended. The interest could be the result of more people cooking during the pandemic, it could be due to the changes in the Illinois Cottage Laws t...

As with any endeavor, we all start with good intensions and hope that all will go well. But hope is not a strategy. Everything we do, every step we take in life, has some level of risk. Starting a business has risk. For many entrepreneurs, it is a risk worth taking. If you step into the entrepreneurial ring, you need to have a plan, you need to kno...

A restaurant called Chicken Salad Chick recently opened in Batavia. It's a franchise of a Southern restaurant started by Stacy Brown. While waiting for my order, I read a wall poster describing how the Chicken Salad Chick started. Stacy was a stay-at-home mom on a mission to make the best chicken salad. Now, there are over 200 franchises of the Chi...

Welcome to a new year! For many who set New Year's resolutions, one of those resolutions is often to lose weight. Losing weight by counting calories and denying yourself the foods you love is unsuccessful more often than not. Intermittent fasting may be a better alternative. Intermittent Fasting Defined While most diets focus on what to eat, i...

 We have some very talented chefs now cooking in the Mill River Cookery – the shared commercial kitchen at The Business of Food. We have decided it's high time to showcase their delicious food. The new  Mill River Eatery will give them the opportunity to share their great food with you here at the Business of Food. You may already kn...

I can count on one hand the number of people who don't like chocolate. What's not to love? It tastes great. It melts in your mouth. There are endless choices. It's good for you. You can eat, drink, or cook and bake with it. The history of chocolate Chocolate is made from the fruit of cacao trees, which are native to Central and South America. The M...

My Dad was an entrepreneur for 45 years in Fall River, Massachusetts, a largely immigrant mill city of 100,000 people known for manufacturing clothing. He started in the produce business in his 20s before the market crash of 1929, working for a local produce company. Selling groceries must have been in his blood. He came from a poor family that had...

Have you ever wondered why so many small businesses, restaurants, in particular, don't make it? The chefs and bakers are skilled at their craft. They make excellent food that keeps people coming back for more. They love what they do, but passion alone is not sufficient to run a successful business over the long term. In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Mo...

We've written entire blogs recently about the history of some favorite food items around the globe, like cheese and ice cream. That made us wonder about how other foods and beverages came to be. Some things, like cake, have been perfected over centuries, while others were entirely accidental. Many food items we love were discovered entirely by acci...