Looking to grow and automate my business

[Nobackburner]

Hello fellow fastlaners! hope you're all having a great day!

I posted my background/intro post a few months back, I am looking for advice at this time to be able to grow and automate the business.
Don't get me wrong...having a business you founded at risk and with almost no help be profitable enough to pay all your bills and then some is great. however the reality is beginning to set in that because I did not go into a SAS business or similar type where all the work is done upfront and then all you do is sit back and sell I need to be seriously thinking about my next steps.

Ideally I would like to have very little involvement in the business itself. my reasoning is that it should operate almost completely independent of whatever I do. So orders should come in be processed and fulfilled. I started literally with no infrastructure, taking orders from social media pages of the business and then processing payments through 3rd party money transfer apps. I upgraded significantly. the business has now its own e-commerce site and it can take and process its own orders with built in payment processing. so one aspect of it is covered. my biggest problem is production. Production is time consuming and the bulk of where all the labor is. it involves cooking more than half our available menu at a commercial kitchen and then store it for order fulfillment. I thought of hiring staff to replace me so I can slowly detach from that aspect of it and have more free time to continue to grow it. I have no idea how to go about hiring someone and I've heard many horror stories from business owners in a variety of industries in town. at this time I am a single member LLC. Should I hire in house and handle everything related to employment myself? should I go the independent contractor route? when should I be thinking of seeking potential investors? up to this point I have been doing most everything on my own, out of fear they would not believe in the business or worse take over control entirely and not put the customer first.
I understand that realistically if I want to scale this through franchise or selling the recipes I cannot do it alone. I do believe based on feedback and reviews from complete strangers that I have a productocracy. of course that hasn't stopped me from making revisions and constant improvements.

I thank you all for your help in advance and I am open to advice/ suggestions / criticism

 

Dislike ads? Become a Fastlane member: Subscribe today and surround yourself with winners and millionaire mentors, not those broke friends who only want to drink beer and play video games. :-)