This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Today's caller has a lot of experience with meal prepping. I actually do some meal prepping too, meaning that every week I think, what would I like to order from Uber Eats or from DoorDash or some other delivery service? That's kind of the extent of my meal prep. But that's not the kind of meal prep this guy does, he actually prepares the food. And naturally because he is a side hustle school listener, he's thinking about hustle ideas and wondering if this can be monetized in some way.
Can he take his skill, his interest and turn it into a marketable side hustle? How can he make extra money without quitting his job by using a skill that he clearly already has and of course, without going into debt? That's what we're all about for the podcast. More than nine years, 3,300 plus episodes and counting. And of course, we try to teach through storytelling.
We try to look at different examples. And if you're not interested in meal prep, like 'cause clearly I'm not either, but I like looking at different business ideas, there might be a way that you can take this as a point of inspiration or practical support for your own idea. That is our mission and that detailed question about starting a meal prep side hustle coming up along with my answer. Stay tuned. [Music]
Hi Chris, my name is Bryce and I'm from Santa Barbara, California.
I've been listening to the side hustle school for just under a year. And generally it seems like side hustles are started by people who have a relatively niche knowledge or skill that they turn into a business. And the one idea that continuously comes to my mind is to somehow turn my habit of meal prepping into a business. So I've been meal prepping five lunches and five dinners every week for several years and have become quite good at keeping the cost low and prepping fast, healthy and tasty meals. I also line up all of the completed meals evenly and take a symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing photo and post it on my personal Instagram page.
A lot of people enjoy the posts and have often reached out to me asking for advice, recipes and have told me that I should turn it into a business. I really wanna start a side hustle but I'm not sure exactly what I should do with this idea. I've thought about creating a planning service that involves laying out the grocery shopping, recipes and instructions for cooking but I'm worried that something like this wouldn't be as appealing as a service like HelloFresh. One advantage of this idea is that it can be cheaper and you can control portion sizes, which for instance is better for those like me who work out five to six times a week and want large portions. The planning service idea is just an example but I feel that with my knowledge on the topic, presentation of the food and my desire to create something out of it, there must be a direction that I can take that would be fruitful.
Do you have any suggestions for what direction I could take with this and also any advice on getting started? Thanks. [Music]
Hey Bryce, here's what I think. You're not HelloFresh but cheaper. I don't think that's the right positioning.
I think your positioning is athlete friendly meal prep, which is some of the features you've already described, big portions, macro aware, visually dialed in, build around that. So start with a paid weekly prep kit. Maybe it's like 10 meals for $65. You know, one consolidated grocery list, a step-by-step prep map, macros for two portion sizes, et cetera. And then layer on a short high touch four week cohort.
This is like prep and portion for athletes. You have a kickoff, you have weekly check-ins, different menu tracks. Maybe one is high protein, one is plant forward. Charge something like $150 to $200, collect testimonials. I think that is one option for moving forward.
And I would also encourage you of course, to launch quickly, launch in seven days, make a one page site with a basic promise, include a few of those grid photos, include a checkout link for a paid pilot. Try to simplify as much as possible, track only two or three metrics. One metric is conversion from views to purchase. Another one is completion rate. Basically who actually cooks, you know, every one of these meals or at least eight out of 10, let's say.
If the completion is low, like less than 30%, let's say, maybe revisit that promise a bit. Make it cheaper, make it faster, fewer pans, bigger portions. Just try to keep things as simple as possible. These kinds of businesses do tend to work better at scale, but they also require a proof of concept. So if you can create the proof of concept, then I don't want to say it's easy to scale because it's definitely not, but that is the first and most important step.
So if you get there, you're on the right track. Of course, let us know how it goes. Listeners, let me know what you're working on. If you have a question, a challenge, a success, whatever the case may be, sidehustleschool.com. Check out the notes pages for every other episode, well, every episode that you want.
I guess there's 3,300 plus episodes. There's a lot there. It's all free, or you could just listen to the new episodes which drop every day, seven days a week, short, action-packed, inspirational. That's it for now. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
