How to Start your Own Baby Food Business Part #6: Manufacturing Vs. Catering

Handmade Baby Food vs. Commercially Produced, Store Bought Baby Food

Food from your baby food catering business will be differentiated from commercial, factory produced baby food in the following ways:

People & Production

Your baby food is made-by-hand by individuals who are committed to the quality of the baby food. At least one certified chef is on duty at all times supervising the process and ensuring that ingredient and cooking standards are met. The food is made in a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen like the ones used by top chefs.

Commercial baby food is produced in mass in a factory or co-packing facility. More often than not, baby food is not the only food product produced in the facility. Typically baby food is made by workers that do not have culinary training and do not have a passion or commitment to high quality baby food.

Hand Selection of Ingredients

Each and every ingredient in your baby food, down to the smallest berry, is hand selected to ensure that it is of the highest quality and to make sure that it is completely ripe.

Commercial baby food is made from massive deliveries of bulk produce that arrive on loading docks. Food quickly passes by workers on conveyer beltsthere is little time for manual inspection.

Source & Quality

The majority of the ingredients in your baby food are locally grown. They are picked only when fully ripe and go from the field to our kitchen within a matter of days, sometimes hours.

Produce used to make commercial baby food comes from multiple sources and multiple countries. It is often picked before fully ripened, to withstand the long transport from the field to the factory. Sometimes produce becomes over-ripe or rotten as it sits on trucks, in warehouses, or on loading docks for days or weeks.

Organic

You use only 100% organic ingredients that are never stored near other non-organic ingredients or produced alongside non-organic foods.

Even foods that are made with organic ingredients can be contaminated with pesticides when they are transported or stored with or near non-organic ingredients or produced in a facility that also makes non-organic food products. Commercial baby food is often made in large factories or by co-packers that also produce non-organic foods.

Washing

All of produce used in the production of your baby food is individually washed or scrubbed by hand.

In commercial baby food factories, produce is either rinsed as it passes under a sprayer on a conveyer belt or it may be allowed to sit in a vat of water to be cleaned. Often the process involves cleaning agents or chemicals.

Preparation

All the produce used in the production of your baby food is peeled, cored, or diced by hand. This provides a second inspection of the ingredient before cooking.

Produce used to make commercial baby food is peeled, processed, and cut by machines in large batches. Seeds, stems, rotten spots, etc. can easily go over looked and may be included in the final product.

Cooking

The majority of your baby food made using produce that has been gently steamed to ensure that the vitamins and nutrients are not «cooked out» of the food. This process also helps the food to retain its natural color. Some foods are baked or roasted whole to ensure that the natural juices are retained.

Commercial baby food is boiled in large vats or cooked quickly in giant, super heated ovens. Both processes are designed to cook the food as quickly as possible so large amounts can be produced at once. The food must be cooked at high enough temperatures to be sterilized in order for it to sit in a warehouse or on a store shelf for long periods of time. Essential nutrients and natural colors are lost. Vitamins and color must be added back into the food. This is accomplished using either synthetic materials or fruit/vegetable concentrates or dyes. Some food dyes are made using ground insects.

Processing

Your baby food is pureed in small batches which are weighed and measured by hand. Each batch is checked and rechecked to ensure a smooth or creamy texture.

Commercial baby food is ground in large, industrial vats. Sometimes tons of food is processed at once.

Texture

You add only a small amount of distilled water to your foodjust enough to allow for a smooth puree. Because we add such a small amount of water, there is no need to add thickening agents.

Large amounts of water are added to commercial baby food to «thin it out». This allows the company to get more baby food out of each pound of produce (water is cheap) thus increasing company profits while nutritionally cheating babies. Thickening agents, such as starch, are then added (starch is cheap too). Thickening agents also «stabilize» factory-made foods by keeping the complex mixtures of oils, water, acids, and solids well mixed.

Quality Control

At every point in the cooking and pureeing process the temperature of the food is checked and rechecked to ensure that the correct temperature and consistency is being met. Temperature is monitored during the cooking process to make certain that vital vitamins and minerals are not «cooked out», and as food is cooled to avoid pathogen growth.

Most of the production is often monitored by computers rather than humans.

Packaging

Your baby food is packaged by a person, giving it one final quality check.

Commercial baby food is packaged by big machines that squirt food into jars or containers with no one overseeing the process.

Freshness, No preservatives

Your stores/kitchen/etc.make fresh baby food daily. You only make enough food to fulfill the needs of for the current week. Your baby food is sold or delivered to customers within 24 to 48 hours of being made. There is no need to add preservatives and no food is wasted.

Commercial baby food is made in mass. Tens of thousands of «units» of baby food are produced each day. Commercial baby food can sit in a warehouse or on a store shelf for up to 2 years. The companies must add chemical or natural preservatives to keep the food from degrading. Even frozen baby food in the grocery store can sit in the freezer for months before it is sold.

Inspired by Nokia 8800 Sirocco

The Nokia 8800 is a gorgeous, slim and attractive mobile phone that comes in a beautiful silver stainless steel covered casing. Nokia 8800 Sirocco is the masterpiece of Nokia as it comes with 64 MB of NAND flash memory that allows the users to store all the information they wish. The Nokia 8800 offers a SVGA 0.5 mega pixel camera which is highly useable and allows user to take snaps accurately and with ease. The user can capture video footage and play back the footage in the video player time and again. The images and the videos can be seen in a clear TFT 256K colour screen.

Nokia-8800-Sirocco has a digital music player and a built-in FM radio so that the user can never be lagged behind in the context of entertainment and information. The user can download or use pre-installed ring tones which are inserted in the phone in polyphonic, MIDI, MP3 and ACC formats.Nokia has put all the latest multimedia features in the 8800. Bluetooth technology provides a wireless connection; EDGE technology provides speed and reliability and tri-band provides GSM coverage. With the support of all these technologies, the users really take the world in their hands.

The Nokia 8800 offers commendable messaging services including MMS, SMS, email and instant messaging. The email service supports SMTP, POP3 & IMAP4 email formats that provide the user with a great method of communication from a mobile phone.

It was only after the launch of Nokia 8800, the true potential of the fashion phone was realized. The super sleek metallic body and smooth edges of the deep thumb rest creates a mesmerizing light and shade effect. The Nokia 8800 Sirocco is not about flashy design, the phone is all about plain luxury. The 256K colour TFT display is carefully protected with scratch-resistant sapphire coated glass to sustain the handset’s royal looks. The smooth slider reveals the least fussy and easy to use keypad.

Nokia 8800 Sirocco have a 2.0 megapixel camera (CMOS) with 8x digital zoom in case you want click a few pictures or video record in 3GP format without any limit on time. Nokia 8800 Sirocco supports external memory card other that the in-built memory of 128 Mb. To maintain the 8800 Sirocco’s individuality, Nokia have applied encryption on its content for the very first time. Please Purchase online http://www.phoneandbeyond.com

Is Transcription Truly a Work From Home Job?

Copyright (c) 2010 Ajay Prasad

Transcription jobs often require some simple things including a good command over the language, a good typing speed and a fast, efficient and reliable internet connection. If you are meeting these requirements, you are very much capable of starting with your own work from home job of transcriptional services. In some special transcription jobs related to medical, legal or other technical fields, some prior experience or knowledge about the subject may also be desirable.

It is a flexible and lucrative option for those who do not want to work under the stressful working cultures of the offices and want to avoid all the hassles of commuting to work places situated too far. It is not only you who saves time, money and fuel by a transcription job, Your employers also cut down their extra costs and can spend more money on other needful areas such as giving the long due bonuses.

The convenience and easiness of working from home is unmatchable. You can have a peaceful environment and work with more concentration at your home than a work place. In addition, with the advent of various transcription softwares, you can do your work quicker and with lesser errors. Working from home as a transcriptionist, you can devote your quality time to your kids, family and other part time jobs you have started taking.

There are many industries who are stepping up to offer transcription jobs to people and with a flexibility of working from home. A general transcription job will require you to be a good listener of the desired language, type quickly as you listen the words accurately and a fast internet connection. As the job takes an industry wise turn, the job requires a background of desired subjects. A legal transcription job will require to transcribe various cases about law, so a basic knowledge about it becomes imperative.

A medical transcription job will require you to transcribe many things with extensive use of medical terminologies and jargons. Medical reports, records of health of the patients or record of discharge of patients will involve medical terms you should be aware about if you want to become a medical transcriptionist.

The job of media transcription will require you to transcribe various chat shows shown on television, debates between two or more renowned groups; transcribe video clips or television discussions about various topics. Media transcription job can be learnt by doing, which means on the job training method is applied on these jobs.

Business transcription jobs require you to transcribe business conferences, meetings, and interviews and other occasions that are of critical importance to the business. The business may be into chemicals or into fast moving consumers goods, a transcription job for the business will be the same in all varying industries. You must be comfortable in using business jargons and abbreviations.

The transcription job requires a few essential things and some skills in you; all this makes it a wonderful job from home opportunity that saves your time, money and labour.

How To Use Your Blog to Market Your Business

Have you just started blogging? Or have you been blogging for a while? As you may already know, a blog is an excellent tool to let the world know about your business or your product, to connect with potential customers and promote your expertise. But how can you maximize your blog’s impact? Here are five tips to do just that:

• Blog Consistently. Many business owners get excited about blogging, post 3-6 times, and then promptly forget about the blog. I have seen many blogs that were started a year or two ago, have a grand total of five posts, and haven’t been updated since sometime last year.

To get the desired effect (search engine and human traffic), you need to update your blog on a regular basis. Search engines love new content and keep coming back to index it. Potential customers also like new content; it’s what keeps them coming back to read your blog.

• Use Your Blog For Branding. Your blog is an extension of your business, so make your blog have a look and feel that mirrors that of your business web site.

If your blog is hosted on the same domain as your web site, you should match the look and feel of your web site exactly. This will be more difficult to achieve if a third party provider hosts your blog. However, you should still aim to present the same brand image.

• Use Search Engine Optimization To Optimize Each Blog Post. The purpose of your blog is to get people who are in your target market to read your posts and enter your sphere of influence. Traffic from search engines does not cost any money, and it is a great way to get potential customers to your blog.

Treat each one of your blog posts as a separate file to be optimized for search engines. Use a keyword research tool to find phrases that are related to the main subject of the post, and weave them into the content of the post.

• Have A Special Offer On Your Blog. Do you offer a free special report? Do you offer a mini course as a bonus for new newsletter subscribers? Add the offer to your blog. This will transform people from casual surfers who just happened to find your blog to newsletter subscribers.

• Share Information About Your Events, Products and Seminars. You might think that everyone has already heard about your upcoming teleclass on life and work balance or your e-book about achieving financial success. Not so! The person reading your blog might be hearing about you for the very first time, so they have no idea about your teleseminars or products unless you specifically tell them.

Avoid overselling, as it will dramatically reduce the number of your blog readers. Do, however, let your blog readers know about your seminars and products. If you don’t tell them, nobody will.

A blog is an excellent tool to generate additional web site traffic, get new newsletter subscribers and sell more products. Use your blog to introduce potential customers to your business.

How to Make Money From the Thing You Love

Making money online seems the answer to all ills, be it for stay-at home moms, those sick of the rat race and to those who have just lost their jobs and know there is nothing else out there at the minute.

However, if you just jump in without any thought at the first great offer you find on the internet, the first promise to make you a millionaire, you will undoubtedly come unstuck. Nearly every other ‘profession/job’ requires some work; lessons to be learned, pitfalls to be aware of. To be successful, you have to be prepared.

The same applies to the Internet Marketing industry. It may appear simple but it is not easy if you don’t know what you are doing. Most people will not make any money online and yet there are others who will make more in one month than most people make in a whole year. Why is that?

It is simple; you have to love what it is that you do. Working for yourself is harder than working a job. There is no-one looking over your shoulder to make sure you are doing what you are supposed to be, nobody looking at the clock when you arrive at your desk. This is a good thing! But the flip side is you only have yourself to answer to and when you feel de-motivated, it is your passion that will get you back to your desk.

Don’t underestimate how demotivating working at home can be. As much as you hated your 9-5, you will have had and, I’m sure at times, enjoyed the human interaction that your job afforded you. People other than the postman would have said hello to you during the day. There would have been jokes, a little gossip, the feeling of cameraderie and belonging, a drink after work. When you’re at home, there will be no-one to cheer you up or help when things get hard.

Most would give this up willingly to get rid of all of the downsides of working for someone else but you will need a great level of enthusiasm to keep you going during the hard times.

If you are selling someone else’s products, you should have researched and like the company and products or services. Not many of us can effectively sell something that we just don’t believe in. Many online entrepreneurs are so good at what they do that they ignore passion. This is because they can sell anything. It always helps if yo have used the products and services so that you know first-hand the benefits.

So you can see doing something you love works in two ways; providing motivation and belief.

Of course, doing the thing you love is not the only thing you need; you must also have a good website if you are selling online, good marketing strategies, widespread advertising and a sustainable plan for the future.

It is your goal to get to the point where you can sell just about anything online. This is when your passion becomes internet marketing itself!

Remember, start by doing something you love; it will keep you motivated through the learning curve which will be steep for most and focus on products that you believe in. If you do these things, success will be yours.