Making Money with Food Part 4: Sell food at a fair

Today's blog is part of a series of blogs about how to make money with food-based businesses. To read the whole series, click here.  

A really good way to make money is to sell things at Fairs.  Fairs are fun and EXPENSIVE.  For some reason whenever people go to Fairs and/or Carnivals* they spend money.  Tons of money.  It usually costs about $4 for a 30 second ride.  Along with the rides being expensive, the food is ridiculously expensive.  I was blown away by the fact that "fresh squeezed" lemonade cost $6.  The "fresh squeezed" lemonade consisted of 95% ice, 4% water, and 1% Countrytime lemonade mix.  

Also a good thing to sell.... food on a stick!  Everyone knows food always tastes better on a stick.

*Is there a difference between a Fair and a Carnival?

Making Money With Food Part 3: Community Refrigerator

Today's blog is part of a series of blogs about how to make money with food-based businesses. To read the whole series, click here.

I work in an office building with a kitchen that is shared by about 40 or 50 people. As you might expect, the shared refrigerator can get pretty nasty after a while. For this reason, every few weeks the head of the maintenance dept. will send out an email to the company and announce that all fridges will be cleaned out over the weekend.

This is where you come in. But first, let me explain what exactly you will be getting into. Most of the food left in a community fridge is quite nasty. I am persistently amazed at the disgusting things that people will leave in the fridge. One time I saw a whole dead fish - I mean, with eyes and scales and everything, laying on an open plate with a sheet of wax paper over top. It was gone later that day, so I guess somebody gutted a fish in the sink and then put it in the toaster oven until it was done, or maybe ate it raw.

On several occasions I've seen raw ground beef, usually in some sort of container, but not always. Again, they must be cooking the stuff in the toaster oven or eating it cold and raw, because thats all we have in the kitchen.

So, my point is that the fridge is a very gross place, and food that has been left there for more than a few days is even more disgusting. BUT, on any given weekend you can find a few decent items if you are a disgusting human being and have low enough dietary standards. 

All you have to do is wait for the maintenance email to go out on a friday afternoon. Then, late in the day after most people have left, you just go to the fridge and grab anything you want. This isn't so much an idea for making money, but its a good way to save money if you are a disgusting enough individual. Also, you are doing the maintenance crew a favor.  Last January I got me a half gallon of month-old egg nog. It was open, but egg nog gets better with time. 

Making Money With Food Part 2: Cake-Fried Chicken

This blog is part of a series on blogs on successful businesses that use innovative recipes to sell great food. Today we are focusing on a restaurant in San Francisco that sells fried chicken that is dipped in red velvet cake batter and then fried.

The secret ingredient for all good recipes is cake

Now, this may sound really good to you, but they don't just stop there. No. That would be one step short of perfection. So, after frying it in cake batter, they then roll it in cake crumbs. This step is vital to the whole process because it causes more cake to stick to the chicken, and we all know that the only thing better than cake-fried chicken is cake-fried chicken with extra cake.

Of course, this does raise some perfectly obvious questions. Namely, why are they limiting themselves to chicken? I mean, couldn't you fry nearly anything in cake batter and have it turn out better? Also, why are they only using red velvet cake? Don't get me wrong - I love me some red velvet cake, but I wonder why they don't try it with chocolate cake, or marble cake, or yellow cake, or whatever cake. I think this is the type of great idea that has made America great, and it needs to be expanded further into our day to day experiments with fried foods.

Making Money With Food Part 1: Donut Cheeseburger

Today we will start a series of blogs about businesses based on food. We've already written about food on a few other occasions, including blogs about bacon, and blogs about fried candy bars.

Howtomakeadollar loves food, especially innovative foods, or innovative ideas with traditional foods.

Today's blog focuses on an innovative combination of two classic american foods: The cheeseburger and the donut. You may think that combining Krispy Kreme with a cheeseburger is gross. But, its not. Its actually a very good idea that has been growing in popularity over the past few years. Its pretty simple. You just slice a donut in half and stick a cheeseburger inside. Other variations include adding an egg, and adding bacon, which Howtomakeadollar supports.

Right now this burger is not widely available, but there is a semi-pro baseball team in St. Louis called the "Gateway Grizzlies," and these burgers are served there at all home games. Additionally the burger has become popular at the Wisconsin state fair. 

This works against you if you are trying to buy one, but it works in your favor if you want to sell them. No competition yet.