Your Food Business Plan for the Year Ahead

This webinar guides food and drink founders through the process of reviewing the year just gone. Using those insights to create a food business plan that’s ambitious, realistic, and actually gets delivered. The starting point isn’t a spreadsheet or a template – it’s a set of honest questions that most business owners never take the time to ask themselves. Jo makes the case for carving out half a day of uninterrupted thinking time before anything else, because the quality of your planning depends entirely on the quality of your reflection.

Working through a clear sequence of exercises, Jo covers how to audit your successes and setbacks, identify where you add most value, set one transformative aspiration for the year ahead, and then build the plans and structures that will turn intentions into results. A real-world client case study brings the whole framework to life, showing what it looks like when you create a food business plan and actually follow it through.

Whether you’re preparing for January or catching up mid-year, this webinar gives you everything you need to approach planning with clarity and confidence.

Key Takeaways:

• Start your planning session by listing every success from the past year – not just the headline wins, but the decisions made, problems solved, and milestones reached. Seeing the full picture makes planning much easier.
• When reviewing what didn’t go to plan, focus on the reasons within your control – lack of time, lack of skills, lack of confidence – because these are the things you can actually address when you create your food business plan.
• Ask yourself what you’ve genuinely enjoyed doing, not just what you’re good at. Knowing where you add most value and find most energy helps you decide what to delegate, outsource, or invest in.
• Set one big aspiration for the year – something genuinely exciting – and write the specific steps underneath it. The goal stops being a dream and starts being a plan.
• Ask your customers and retailers questions too. Find out what they’re aiming for next year. The closer your plans align with their priorities, the more relevant and indispensable you become.
• The three plans every food business needs: 12-month sales plan, 12-month marketing plan, and the Big Dream plan. The first two are operational guides; the third is what keeps you motivated when it gets hard.
• Block time in your calendar for sales calls, emails, and content creation as if they were client appointments – non-negotiable and planned in advance. Tasks that aren’t scheduled don’t get done.
• Review progress monthly, not just at year end. Note what worked, what didn’t, and whether activities are actually moving the business forward. By December, you’ll have a full picture ready for the next plan.
• Reward yourself when you hit your targets. Running a food business alone is hard, and motivation matters. Treat personal and business rewards as a legitimate part of how you stay on track.

Notable Quotes:

• “Give yourself some quiet time, a few hours, half a day – and be really, really honest.”
• “Don’t look at what didn’t go to plan from the point of view of ‘am I rubbish?’ Look at it from the point of view of what could I have done differently.”
• “I literally book time in my calendar like it’s a customer appointment. It’s non-negotiable time.”
• “I believe we can all do more than we think we can – we just need that little nudge and that little bit of support and accountability.”

Next Steps:

Set aside some time to really think about how the past year has gone, and use the lessons learned to develop your food business plan for the future. Want to talk it through with someone? Then get in touch with the team at Relish today, we can help you grow.