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A business plan represents the roadmap for successfully developing or expanding a business. A complete business plan includes short-term and intermediate goals, time tables for achieving these goals, and estimated start-up costs. It serves as a feasibility plan, a marketing plan, and an operating plan. A business plan also is a tool for attracting potential investors and can be used to successfully negotiate start-up loans with lending institutions. Although no one likes to think about things that could go wrong with a new business, a good business plan will also include contingency plans for countering probable piffalls.
This fact sheet provides information on the contents of a typical business plan, especially as it relates to food and agricultural products businesses. The business plan format utilized for this fact sheet obviously is not the only format, but it does represent a fairly standard business plan outline.