I have been making Jerky for years now and many people have told me I should start selling it. I am ready to take that step, especially since the wife is pushing me. Going to start small, since I don't have the assets to go bigger yet. Just bought a slicer, and already have a commercial 17 pound capacity dehydrator. It will be alot to take on at first, but I want to maybe leave something for my son to carry on. Any advice or tips?
Our pastor's wife is from Wisconsin and knew the Jack Links family when they were approaching other farmers wanting to secured a beef supply. She always talks about how another family that "wasn't interested" missed out on being "the beef supplier" for such a big business (45ish years ago). It is staggering how big the jerky business got!) I don't know anything about jerky. But i learned a lot about catering when we started getting into BBQ. Converting from cooking for 2 to cooking for 150 was interesting. I started writing down all my favorite recipes so when i was making sides at 5am i didn't hafta taste test everything. I took notes on everything like, yields for macaroni. __Pounds of dry macaroni makes __quarts of macaroni salad. My hand written recipes have notes all over them so i could run out and put together a side salad for 1-8 quarts without thinking and i knew it would be consistent every time. So i guess what I'm saying is organization, planning, note keeping, streamlining are key. It will be fun, interesting and a lot of work (for little pay lol) I wish you the best.
Good luck. Post pics of your first commercial batch. Btw, are you getting inspected by health regulators or whatever you need to do to comply with local regulations?
