New Business Ideas No. 5: Baked potatoes

This is the fifth of a series of low capital micro-business ideas

There is nothing like walking through a park and capturing the scent of baked potatoes. This crispy skin potato on the outside, with soft fluffy filling, served with your favorite topping, is a delightful meal in itself. Baked potatoes never fail to satisfy, even though they are centuries old and available almost anywhere good steaks are served.

The novelty here is not the baked potato itself but serving it as a fast food on the street.

Preparing baked potatoes isn't a difficult process, what's important is the type of potatoes you use. Idaho potatoes are best, but the author often uses Dutch potatoes quite successfully. There are also some other varieties that are suitable, large size is important.

What's critical to making a good baked potato is to make the outside crispy and the inside soft and fluffy. You can clean the potato with water and softly dry the potato with a cloth. leaving the potato standing for a few days before using. Sometimes a little salt on the outside will aid crispiness. Sometimes the potatoes can be boiled in water first before being put in the oven to make them crispy, but handling them is harder. Another way is to wrap the potatoes in aluminum foil to keep the moisture in so they remain soft. A touch of butter, olive oil, with even a pinch of rosemary and pepper will give it a very distinct taste.

At the stall you can use either a gas of charcoal oven for that extra taste experience to do the final heating. Once the potatoes are cooked, cut a cross at the top and while holding the potato with a tea towel gently push some of the inside out to make place for the fillings.

Now the fillings are the piéce de résistance of the baked potato concept. This may just be as simple as melted butter, melted butter with garlic, cheese, or a cheese sauce. Alternatively a sour cream which you can make yourself by adding vinegar to beat up cream, with a pinch of horseradish, or wasabi, mustard, dill, or other desirable condiment will delight. Other more elaborate toppings may include cream with tuna, or prawn mixed in with a seafood theme. Ground smoked meats or roasted chicken pieces could be used for a BBQ theme, or curry or cumin for an Asian theme. The fillings are up to your imagination and you can have a selection of fillings available for customers to make a choice from. You can also have condiments like beef bacon, cashew nuts, and parsley, etc, to finish off the presentation. Even roast turkey stuffing and cranberry sauce will make for a novel baked potato.

You can be basic or go for gourmet.

Now what about the business model. This would be great as a little stall, as there is virtually no preparation needed onsite. All can be brought semi prepared, just in need of heating before sale. All toppings and condiments can be pre-prepared ready for dispensing on the baked potatoes as per customer requests. This could be upgraded to a minivan or be a stall in a shopping centre.

Once again this business idea is something you can do yourself. There are numerous recipes on the internet, it's just about finding the right variety of potato and developing your perfect potato through practice. You can also experiment with the numerous online topping recipes, until you get the ones you want. The oven could be purchased from a food equipment wholesaler or even online. They are not expensive.

Here is another idea that can get you into business with a moderately low capital outlay. Combine it with the "Banh Mi" concept to offer a basic roast dinner back in business ideas No. 2. With good volume this idea could be a moderately profitable one and something you could even franchise in Asia and Africa.

Good luck with this idea.

Originally published in Emigem Magazine 23rd August 2013

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