Selling Pulled Pork to a Resturant

[kgrigio]

A friend of mine has a successful Mexican restaurant and is looking to add items to his menu and he knows I do BBQ. We started throwing around the idea of me opening up a business for smoking a fixed amount of pounds of pulled pork each week and selling it to his restaurant where he would incorporate the meat into various dishes.

I am looking into the licensing and permits and where I might rent a building with a commercial kitchen. We have toyed with using his kitchen, but the back of his restaurant is an ally with a small shared patio and not a place I would want to put a smoker, but might be the direction we go just to get started.

If this arrangement goes well I would look to expanding to other restaurants in the area.

To help avoid a lot of up front expenses, I would like to use my two smokers. Would this even be acceptable from a permit and licensing standpoint?

Would I be able to use my home vacuum sealer or would I need to purchase a commercial grade sealer?

If anyone has any other advice, or things I need to consider, or pitfalls to be aware of I would be more than grateful.

[kgrigio]

I should add, part of the reason I am even considering this, knowing that I would have to get a commercial kitchen, is my city is really trying to attract new businesses and have up to $25k forgivable loans if you buy/rent in certain areas of the city and use the money to fix up the property. This $25k could be used to fix or repair a commercial kitchen or add one to a property if it wasn't already on site.

I have talked to the person at the city that manages this loan program and he felt my current line of thinking would definitely qualify for the forgivable loan, as long as I had the blessing from the health inspector as to the plans before I applied for the loan.

[IamMadMan]

Sounds like you are on the right track...

You may want to check with the health department on the vac-packaging, there are separate regulations for this type of packaging.

[poorolddan]

Do a search. Cooking for someone else to sell has been discussed many times in the past year.

[HBMTN]

If your goal is to just sell him barbecue you'll never sell him enough to justify all the legal aspects of opening a business and a commercial kitchen, etc. If you like the iea of opening a business then I suggest your goal be a restaraunt or catering business and selling him barbecue to be a side perk.

[Cook]

Vacuum sealing isn't an easy process. Be sure to bring that up with your health department representative...they'll fill you in.

[jimbloomfield]

You should plan on more then one customer and meat type

[nachos4life]

Originally Posted by Cook

Vacuum sealing isn't an easy process. Be sure to bring that up with your health department representative...they'll fill you in.

Cook's not kidding. I've been going back and forth with local and state HD on this for over a month.

I sell BBQ to a restaurant at a wholesale cost. We do this because we get a good deal on using their place as our commissary in return (we own a part-time food truck and catering business). I wouldn't do it as a sole part of my business as its not profitable enough by itself; however, its pretty easy to throw some stuff for him on the pit when cooking for our own events and brings in a steady bit of money albeit not much.