How do you discover if there is a need for a business in your area?

Can you give any more information? The answer for, say, a coffee shop might be different than the answer for an indoor bounce-house emporium.

People will talk about things they can’t get in their area: a type of food, an appliance, a service. Every time you hear this, you ask them how much they would be willing to pay for those things. You do some research: cost of the item, cost of getting the item from its source to your customer, the cost of your time and/or labor. You subtract the total costs of providing these things from the price people are willing to pay and the answer is your potential profit. Before you get into bricks and mortar, you furnish a few people with these and see how it goes. If your product moves, if your market is large enough to support you, and if you have the will to provide, you’re in a small business.

This is a service to teach people some basics of cooking in their own homes. I don’t want to do it in my house because there would be health code issues. (Cats with access to the kitchen and no way to block it off.)

LOL!!! I just found my own question about this very thing. It’s from 2011!

Just one word: Demands. If there is so many demands and yet there is no one able to fulfill it, I’m sure you would get so many profits.

Take a long hard look at your neighborhood and make a realistic assessment of how many people would use your service. If there’s no market for what you are offering, you can be the world’s best at what you do, but in the end the business will fail. Look at the community as a whole and be honest.

Local newspaper online forums.

I took cooking classes at a college, the instructor also gave in home one-on-one classes. The instructor make trips to some people’s house to make custom gourmet meals in bags for refrigerator and freezers. He catered for parties at large house parties.

Honestly, realistically, @tedibear, I can’t imagine there would be much demand. Most people who don’t know the basics of cooking are willfully ignorant. “Joy of Cooking” basically has a recipe for boiling water. Every detail is explained. Most of your target audience would be young, meaning limited income and computer savvy. You can You Tube about anything under the sun.

I see where you’re coming from, but I don’t see it going anywhere. :-/