Get Cooking: Peking Duk's guide to coming up with a bangin business idea

We’re big believers in bangin business ideas. That’s why we’re here to help boost your self-belief and help you come up with an idea you can actually launch! We’ll cover everything — from how to develop your ideas to starting up your business and scoring funding.

Kick-offs: where to get started

A great place to kick off is by having a look in the mirror (hello handsome) and figuring out what sets your soul on fire. Passion is critical to the foundation of your business idea, but also needs to be balanced with practicality. Start by answering these three questions:

What are you passionate about?
Who'd want your product/service?
What problem can you solve with your business?

Having the answers to these three questions will set you up for success when developing a winning business idea. For example, we’re mad for escargot. Love ‘em! So we’ve come up with a business idea to launch our own escargot food truck, bringing these tasty, delicious Frenchy snails to the world. We harnessed our passion and channelled it into a business idea.

Follow these five steps to come up with your own bangin business idea:

1. Pin-point the pain points

The key to a successful business is being able to solve a problem or meet a need that's been left hanging like a half-deflated beach ball.

Identifying what people are struggling with and helping them solve it'll set you up for a thriving business idea. From there, you can begin to grow the idea and expand on it over time.

For example, we realised that we’re not the only ones obsessed with escargot! There’s snail-heads across Australia who face the same problem as us — not enough access to these tasty delicacies. It was up to us to change that.

2. Research, research, research...

Jump on the internet like you're a kangaroo on a pogo stick and research your target market. Get strategic about it. Scope out your competition (if any!); get to know your target audience and find the gap in the market that's screaming to be filled by your passion-infused idea.

That's what we did. It didn’t take us long to realise there was a huge gap in the escargot food truck market. We knew we’d never seen one before but learning that others like us were screaming out for one really cemented our idea.

3. Strategy and uniqueness: the ultimate business unicorn

Time to mix some magic into your business idea. Think about what sets your business apart from the rest of the pack. How can you put your own twist on things? How can your business get ahead of the rest? Defining your unique value or service offering is an important strategic step in developing your idea.

Here are some key pointers to get your thinking underway:

Define your competitive advantage — what sets you apart from others in the market?
Define the gaps in your target market — how and why aren’t their needs being met?
Define how your idea will fill that gap — how do you propose your idea will meet the need?

Addressing all of these will help you carve out your idea’s niche, which will be the guiding principles of your business plan.

For our escargot food truck, we defined our uniqueness by a) having an escargot food truck in the first place but b) providing top tier restaurant-quality food from a portable kitchen. This means we can deliver more escargot to more escargot-lovers in more places.

4. Testing 1, 2, 3...

You can’t launch your idea without testing it first. Dip your toes in the water and test your idea on a small scale. See how people respond, gather feedback and fine-tune your offering based on real-world responses.

We’re planning to take our food truck for a spin locally — like Mr Whippy — before committing to massive festivals or food-fairs. We’re going to listen to what local punters like and don’t like, and then fine-tune our service based on their feedback. It's honestly worth its weight in gold.

5. Refine and scale

The above will help you listen and learn, but you also need to evolve your business idea. Finely tuning it and polishing it based off feedback and testing will enable you to grow it. Being able to scale your business up (or down, when needed *cough pandemic cough*) is the key to making it boom when business is good and keeping it afloat in tougher times.

We plan to start with just the one escargot food truck. Then once we refine our menu and catering options locally, we’ll look to scale, which might include bigger food festivals, adding more delicacies and taking the truck on the road across Australia!

Bang – you’ve got your business idea!

So, there you have it. A tried-and-true method to cook up a bangin business idea. Remember, success comes to those who dare to mix their passion with a keen eye for opportunity. You also have to believe!

Follow these steps to develop your business idea and watch the magic happen.

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