Learning how to bring your snack product to market does not require a business degree or secret knowledge. All it takes is a little ingenuity, some focus, and a willingness to follow the methods used by countless people before you.

Know Your Customer

No matter how amazing the product sounds in your head or tastes in your mouth, a business gets nowhere unless it knows how to sell to its customers. Of course, the first step in that process is to determine who customers might be.

Consider your target market. Are you selling a snack for health nuts or couch potatoes? Kids or moms? Learning about your target market will give you invaluable information as you make the millions of decisions involved in developing a snack.

Follow Food Standards and Regulations

Learning how to bring your snack product to market involves a crash course in food standards and regulations. In the United States and around the world, different governing bodies determine if a food product is safe for the market.

If you live in the United States and want to get your product in stores or even on Amazon, you’ll need to get it reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). You will save yourself a lot of time and headache if you learn the rules early and follow them to a T.

Build an Infrastructure

As a business, you want to have the ability to scale upward. Sure, the prototype snack might have been made in your kitchen. But if you want to set yourself up for success, you’ll need to get the space and capital to handle larger orders. Imagine if your first bulk order came in before you had the space to handle it. That would be a terrible missed opportunity when it should have been a major turning point in your business.

Packaging and Labelling

If you’ve been down a snack aisle, you know there are many, many different food options to choose from. When you design your packaging, think of ways that you can make it stand out. How are you going to grab shoppers’ attention? It may be wise to work with a professional branding company to produce the best possible work.

But the packaging isn’t only for branding the product. Labeling is also a major part of food production. A well-developed label—one that follows government regulations—should tell the consumer about possible allergens, expiration dates, and where the product was made. A proper label gives your snack authority—a promise to the consumer that they’re eating something made at the highest professional standards.