Maybe you’ve always dreamed of owning your own business. Or maybe you’ve just admired your friends, family, and acquaintances that have chosen this path for themselves. Either way, something has brought you to this place and time, and you are now reading up on the five essential steps to starting your own small business. And that’s not a bad thing. YoNaturals Vending is here to help.

The first thing that you will need is an idea. A good idea that will allow you to carve out a place for yourself in the very competitive marketplace. However, that said, this idea does not have to be your own original idea. In fact, many people have the desire and will to work for themselves but simply lack an idea. In these cases, potential small business owners usually choose one of three routes: opening a franchise, purchasing an existing business, or going into a partnership with another person or group of people that do have a good idea for a business. In the case of YoNaturals, we already have the good idea for a small business and are simply looking for new people to partner to help us expand market share.

Once you have your idea, then the next most important step is to develop a business plan. A business plan is an essential part of seeking out financing and proving that you’ve put a lot of thought into your small business concept. Potential investors will be very interested to see the ways in which you plan to track and evaluate your business when it is up and running. No matter whether you seek financing from banks, private investors, or your own friends and family, when you make the pitch, you will want to give them a sense of confidence in you and in your business model. This is another area in which YoNaturals can be very helpful to potential small business owners. We have a trained staff on hand that has gone through this process with other business owners and is more than capable of guiding you through the process as well.

After you’ve secured your financing and written your business plan, you should be almost to the finish line, right? Not quite. There are still a few more things that you will need to do before you set up shop, things like talking to a lawyer about business practices and seeking advice from an accountant on managing your books. It’s important to iron out these details before hand (as much as possible), so that you can put more of your time and energy toward making your business a success once it is up and running. Now, for the good news: all of those consultations, paperwork, and other seemingly mundane tasks will soon pay off when you look up and realize that you are standing at the threshold of the American dream.

Make your dream a reality today by visiting www.YoNaturals.com to find out how to get started.

Topics: Mark Trotter, YoNaturals Vending Franchise | 1 Comment »

Author: Jessica Vachal

Living healthfully is not as tricky as it seems, despite the fact that far too few people embrace this fact enough to truly live healthy lives. The main key of being healthy is to respect yourself and have love for your body and your mind. This is a hard concept for most people to grasp. After all, the stereotype of a “healthy” person is one who could also be called a “gym rat” or a “gym bunny.” In America we tend to look at being healthy as being synonymous with being thin or with having big, rippling muscles. The fact of the matter, however, is that this is not the definition of what “healthy” is, and that “healthy” is, in actuality, a mindset and a lifestyle in and of itself whether than a physical description.

Being healthy involves your mind just as much as it involves your body, and this applies to physical activity just as much as it applies to self-esteem. With studies boasting the benefits of exercise on everything from memory to concentration, it should come as little surprise that the encouragement to be physically active for at least thirty minutes per day are not letting up, and will not be stopping any time soon. Not only with those few minutes of activity help you to maintain your weight and to keep your heart pumping effectively, it will also help your mind, and this is a very strong component of being healthy.

Force yourself into exercise that is steady enough it forces you to breathe a little heavier than you would normally if you were just walking down the street. This is the perfect level of exertion you should be putting into your daily exercise, and you can rest assured that you will return home after that power-walking or that jog, and feel significantly better than you did when you left the house – even if you were in a good mood when you left! Such are the benefits of exercise, and this is why we should all work so hard to keep it as a part of our lives!

Keeping the mind healthy is more than just keeping the body busy; you also have to exercise your brain – memory games, crossword puzzles, these are both good ways to make sure you stay sharp and maintain your abilities of memory, organization and so forth. Learning new things is also a great way to keep your mind in shape, and this is a very strong portion of having an enjoyable life, in addition to keeping your physical self healthy and strong.

So take good care of yourself, be active with your mind as well as your body – which in itself will benefit the mind. YoNaturals is doing everything we can to ensure that  you have organic and natural vending options available  in as many places as possible. But only you can make the proper choices for your life.

Topics: YoNaturals Vending Franchise | Give Your Two Cents »

Author: Jessica Vachal

The importance of exercise is truly not the sort of thing that should be overlooked, say we at Yo Naturals. Yet, many people do overlook it, everyday. Worse still, most people actively make up excuses about why they cannot exercise, rather than spending that time taking  walk around the block or doing some push-ups. Granted, we want to do more than a mere ten minutes of exercise per day – we do want to aim for a full half-hour of breathing hard and sweating – but even that ten minute time-span of a brisk walk or some jumping jacks would be better than that same ten-minute time-span spent sitting on your couch.

The main issue with humans and exercise seems to stem from the fact that exercise is now such a separate part of our daily lives. We wake up, walk from our house to our car, walk from our car to our office and then walk from our office to our car and go home again. We spend a lot of our lives sitting, where as our ancestors - and people in other countries to boot – spent and spend their days walking from store to store, or farming or any number of other daily life tasks that require exercise. As cars become ever-more important to our communities, within the United States especially, we continue to move further and further away from getting ourselves up and walking to work, or at least walking to the bus stop to take our public transportation to work.

No, indeed, we are a country that thrives on ease and comfort, but all of that may be changing in time, and our exercise habits may change accordingly. Surely none of us have missed the fact that America has found itself in the midst of an economic hard-time, with the prices of everything under the sun seeming to rise. Gasoline is one of these items getting pricier by the day, making people rethink the large cars they own and drive to work every day. The real goal of such an economic hard time, however, should be looking at your car as an expensive toy, yes, but seeing about walking around your neighborhood more.

Make exercise a part of your everyday life again, but walking to your errands instead of driving to them. Get a basket for your bike and ride to the grocery store, take your kids on a walk outside instead of having them sit inside and watch TV which raises your electricity bills and pulls those purse strings even tighter. And of course, walk to your nearest Yo Naturals healthy vending machine (or the furthest one!).

We can make exercise a part of our everyday lives but it usually takes a catalyst to get us into it – use this economic hard-time as a means to re-embrace exercise. You will probably still have to drive to work, yes – twenty miles one-way is a long distance for anyone to ride a bike, let alone walk – but you can spend the rest of your life out of your car, helping your wallet and your heart all at the same time!

Topics: YoNaturals Vending Franchise | Give Your Two Cents »

Author: Lisa Arnold

Carob is often considered to be a healthy alternative to chocolate. It is sweet and almost candy-like. Because it is naturally sweet, many products made from carob generally contain far less sugar than chocolate products.

It is very likely that you have eaten carob or snacks and other foods containing carob without knowing it. Carob has a wide variety of uses such as being used to sweeten icing, cakes and cookies, and other candy which uses carob rather than chocolate in an effort to provide healthier alternatives to the sugar-filled fattening candy.

Carob is free from the stimulant caffeine which is abundant in chocolate. Carob has some health benefits such as helping with digestion, and it contains a many vitamins and minerals including vitamin A, B, B2, B3 and vitamin D, potassium, iron, calcium. Carob is also high in calcium, phosphorus and magnesium. And it also contains iron, manganese, barium, copper and nickel.

The carob tree is a member of the legume (pea) family and it grows in Mediterranean areas. It produces no fruit for the first 15 years of its life, but will fruit well into its old age. A large tree can produce one ton of beans in one harvest.

The carob tree flowers in September and October. Carob is the pulp harvested from the pods of the tropical carob tree.

Carob is healthier than chocolate and is often be found in health food stores and in some supermarkets that have a large selection of healthy foods.

Carob can be purchased in many ways including fresh or dried form, in bars or in pieces, and is often comes in snack packs. It is also used in some trail mixes and is used as a sweetener in health bars and other nutritious snack products. Also carob chips can be purchased for baking.

Carob powder can be substituted for cocoa powder in any recipe. Carob is also available in bars, drops and in confectionery.

YoNaturals of California would like to offer the following great cocoa-like drink for your collection of recipes:

Hot Carob Cocoa Drink

Ingredients

2 cups of regular or light soy milk

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1/4 cup unsweetened carob powder

Directions:

Pour all liquids including the vanilla extract, into a pan over medium to high heat until when it just comes to a boil and then blend in the dry ingredients. Stir well and pour into a mug. Add a natural sweetener to taste such as raw honey or molasses. It makes a light and delicious cocoa-like drink. A little cinnamon can be added as well for those who like a little spice in their cocoa.

Serves: 1 or 2

Topics: School healthy vending programs by YoNaturals, YoNaturals Vending Franchise | 1 Comment »

In the throes of summertime and the heat of the afternoon, there are few things that children love more than a tasty frozen treat. However, it is wise to limit the scoops of ice cream and super sweet snow cones this summer, in favor of giving your children a more healthful alternative. With a little forethought, many healthy frozen treats can be easily created at home and kept on hand for when your youngster wants a snack that will help her cool down after a period of outside play. YoNaturals has a few healthy contributions for school vending programs that can offer your child taste as well as nutrition.

As seen in the two preceding parts of this series on healthy snacking, providing healthy frozen snacks for kids is much easier if the child in question enjoys eating a variety of fruits. For example, a banana can be skewered onto the end of popsicle stick, dipped into some chocolate yogurt, rolled in pieces of peanuts, and then frozen for a treat that satisfies the sweetest of taste buds.

For the fruit-averse among your children, you can create your own ice cream sandwiches by putting vanilla frozen yogurt between two graham crackers and covering the exposed ice cream with chopped peanuts or graham cracker crumbs. Freeze these treats until they are firm, and then serve them up to your (soon-to-be) happy child. Of course, you should also feel free to use chocolate graham crackers or chocolate fro-yo if it would better please your child’s palate.

Another frozen fruit idea consists of turning applesauce into a kind of modified popsicle. This is accomplished simply by pouring the applesauce into a popsicle freezer mold or a simple paper cup, inserting a popsicle stick, and freezing it until firm enough to eat. With the variety of applesauce flavors on the market today, you should have little problem with finding ones that can provide a variety of tastes to your discriminating child. As with the other examples, simply rolling this frozen treat in crushed nuts or graham cracker crumbs can add greatly to your child’s enjoyment of the frozen snack.

Sometimes all attempts to convince your child to eat frozen yogurt and frozen fruits will fail. Or maybe the busy parent will simply forget to prepare in advance for their child’s heat-induced snack craving. Either way, there is at least one ice cream freezer treat that will not overload your child’s snack time with fat or calories: the fudgsicle. Consider keeping some of these chocolaty treats on hand as an alternative to the other frozen treats listed above. Until we can fully institute healthy school vending programs, these are some of your best options. And don’t forget to give your child plenty of water to drink before they head back out to play in the sun.

Article written by Laura Rayburn of YoNaturals Healthy Vending Business in California

Topics: School healthy vending programs by YoNaturals | Give Your Two Cents »

Many people believe that organic food is better for them.  In fact, this is represented by the amount of space in grocery stores now devoted to organic produce, meats, dairy products, juices, cereal, even junk food.  But is organic food better than conventional food products?  This remains to be proven conclusively, but perhaps we can all agree that organic food is definitely better than many of the options consumers have out there. That is why YoNaturals healthy vending machines only carry the best selection of organic and natural foods.

The dynamic by which Americans are eating is beginning to shift and, with the organics market booming nationwide, growing by as much as 20 percent a year since the 1990s, it seems the big corporations are noticing this trend and are trying to keep up.  A similar occurrence happened like this, as we all remember, in the mid to late nineties with the advent of the World Wide Web and Silicone Valley —and we all know what happened there.  Of course, some smart people made millions faster than it took Jack to climb the beanstalk.  And what happened?  Like Jack, these virtual companies awakened the sleeping giants of the brick and mortar corporate world, alerting them to the high stakes potential of cyber space sales and were either bought out or evaporated like water particles into the atmosphere.

Similar occurrences are developing or have already developed in the organic food business.  Buying organic food used to mean supporting small farmers who combine environmentally safe farming practices with a political agenda to promote and develop food systems which are local, sustainable, and able to survive independent of corporate agribusiness.  Now these small local farmers, who brought the value of organic farming to the attention of consumers, are being massacred by corporate competition, and are either being pressured into selling their farms or shut down completely, as organic food is now the trendiest trend for advertisers of these mega-corps to exploit.  Organic food is seen for its profit making potential and treated as a market niche.  Who would have known that quite possibly and problematically that a corporate farm may have organic fields right alongside fields that farm by conventional methods?

Next time you’re at the grocery store look extra carefully at the packaging of a product labeled as organic and see if you recognize the name of the company.  You may or may not recognize the name, but a little research may reveal that there is a much larger sugar daddy involved and that marketing and imaging can go a long way toward persuading consumers to buy something that may not be as good as it claims to be.  This is just a warning.  You may ask what does it matter if a product is made by a small business or a larger business?  The caution is that it may not be as good as it claims to be.  Don’t just buy organic because it says it’s organic—look at it—study it for a moment.  You wouldn’t want to buy one brand of organic milk that has been ultra pasteurized using a high heat process that destroys its enzymes and many of its vitamins so it can be sold over long distances, if you can buy another organic milk product that has these things would you?

So be careful how you shop—keep your eyes peeled and try to support the farmers and companies that value all of the facets of organic farming and products, not just turning it into the newest trend that everybody needs to prescribe to so the wealthiest companies CEOs get $20 million bonuses.  Of course if it says organic it’s probably better than many other options, but just because it says it doesn’t mean it is. Make sure you try YoNaturals healthy vending for your organic and natural snacking.

Author: Josh Zelesnick

Topics: YoNaturals Vending Franchise | Give Your Two Cents »

Author: Shabi

It’s healthy, it’s disgusting, and it might possibly be the hardest task on earth to get your kids to chow down on a snack bar made from organic foods. How easy is it to wean your children away from their potato chips, candy bars and chocolate coated everything’s? It’s a Herculean task and one that doesn’t become any easier when they see the sometimes disgusting organic bar food snack.

The last thing that you want your child to do is to ingest toxins and pesticides from non-organic bars, but unless you find a way to make the organic bar food snacks more palatable to their young stomachs, you will find that you have a rebellion on your hands, especially if you went and threw off all of their most favored junk foods!

This is almost definitely the wrong tack to with junk- and fast-food addicted children. The first step that you need to take is to introduce these foods slowly to their palates. You might be worried about the non-organic foods they’re consuming now, but remember that habits of a lifetime cannot be changed in the blink of an eye.

In essence you will need to retrain your children to eat healthy and this includes eating healthy snacks such as organic bar food snacks among other things. Take it in baby steps and proceed slowly and with caution. The first thing you need to do when going organic is to taste the snacks that you’re going to foist on your children.

If it looks green and disgusting even to your eyes, then it will almost definitely gain a negative response from your kids. If it looks marginally pleasing to the eye, and the ingredients in it sounds interesting, you will first of all want to have a sample go at it.

Remember that your adult palate might be different from your child’s palate so tread cautiously here. What you might like in the way of organic bar food and snacks, might not appeal to your kids but then again you might have hit the taste bud jackpot of all time and found the best junk food substitute for your kids.

And if you’re into health bar foods you might find an organic bar food that might suit your palate at the same time. Of course this is not everyone’s cup of tea, but by experimenting a little you might be able to find the perfect snack not only for your kids but also for yourself as well!

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Author: Davinos Greeno

Organic produce is one of the fastest growing food retail sectors in the country.

Health scares such as BSE and foot-and-mouth, plus fears of GM crops/food and synthetic dyes and ingredients such as Sudan1 have led to considerable growth in the organic and the healthy food market as worried consumers seek out more healthy and natural products.

Recent research by market analysts nVision suggests four in ten adults now choose organic options on a regular basis. Organic supermarkets in England are boming and Europes biggest organic event, the Biofach exhibition in Germany in getting bigger every year.

Unfortunately, at the moment retailers are charging artificially high prices. I was in Tesco last week which is a rare occurrence as I shop locally where possible, and I nearly died when I saw the prices being charged for organic yogurt and eggs compared to the non-organic brands. Its about time that the government started to investigate these organic suppliers and supermarkets to see who is ripping us off! Encouraging competition is not always a good idea as this can drives down prices (good for the consumer) which can put organic suppliers out of business if they have small profit margins. I understand that we have to pay more for organic produce because there are more crop failures due to the fact that the farmers cannot use pesticides, but what is an acceptable percentage and does this vary from product to product. Should organic fish be 10 percent more expensive than non organic fish and vegetables 20 per cent etc?

Once only available in small health shops or farmers markets, organic foods are becoming much more widely available. In the past 10 years sales of organic food in the UK have increased over 10-fold from £100m in 1993/94 to nearly £1.4bn in 2004/05. This large growth is predicted to continue, and many companies are jumping into the market. Sales through farmers markets and farm shops have grown faster than any other retail outlet. Organic food and drink now accounts for 1.2 per cent of the total retail market (Source Soil Association).

There are two types of organic foods.

Fresh food

Fresh food is seasonal and perishable. Vegetables and fruits are the most available type of organic, fresh food, and are closely associated with organic farming. They are often purchased directly from growers, at farmers markets, supermarkets or through speciality food stores. Organic meat, eggs, dairy are also available.

Processed food

Processed food accounts for most of the items in a supermarket. Often, within the same store, both organic and conventional versions of products are available, and the price of the organic version is usually higher as already mentioned. Most processed organic food comes from larger companies producing and marketing products like organic baby food, organic beer, organic pasta or other convenience foods.

How do I know its organic?

The term organic is defined by law - all organic food production and processing is governed by a strict set of rules. Look for symbols such as the Soil Association symbol for your guarantee of the highest organic standards. The Soil Association organic symbol is the UK’s largest and most recognisable trademark for organic produce. Wherever you see it you can be sure that the food you have purchased has been produced and processed to strict and rigorous animal welfare and environmental standards. Other symbols to look out for include the Organic Food Federation and Certified Organic Ingredients.

Most people dont have enough time to read the labels of all the different food products that they buy to check for organic ingredients. So look for the various symbols, you can then be sure that the product complies with minimum government standards.

The use of such symbols is entirely optional and a product can still be organic even though if it doesnt carry the symbol of a certifying body. That means if you want to be 100% satisfied that what you are eating or using is organic always read the label or speak to the vendor.

Topics: Mark Trotter, YoNaturals Vending Franchise | Comments Off

Families are going to have to put a little effort forth in order to create a healthy eating environment for their children. Mark Trotter, CEO of YoNaturals, has compiled a list of tips for those who would like to create just such an environment for their families.

1. Most people have at least some prior experience with attempting to stay on a diet or health plan, and most have failed to do that at some point in their lives. Staying committed to a healthy eating plan can often be extremely difficult, especially when we are surrounded with so many unhealthy distractions each and every day. Having the support of those around you is extremely beneficial to power through those difficult times. That’s why we recommend that any family who wishes to stay true to a healthy eating plan should have every person join the same dietary plan simultaneously. This will allow the family to exclude all foods from the home which are not part of the plan, as well as bolstering the resolve of each individual family member. Furthermore, no family member will be tempted by the food which another is allowed to eat, while they are not.
2. In the same vein, Mark Trotter recommends that families eat meals at regular times at the dinner table. Firstly, eating at regular times will prevent excessive food consumption and snacking behaviors. Eating together will help ensure that no one is giving in to the temptations which inevitably arise.
3. YoNaturals recommends slow-paced, leisurely meal times; this prevents overeating by regulating food intake. It actually takes an average of fifteen minutes or so for our bodies to tell us when we are full. If we are eating too quickly, we will often far surpass what is necessary for us to eat without even knowing it, until it is too late. This in turn will cause us to eat more and more at successive meals, do to an increasing stomach size and appetite.
4. Finally, always have a few healthy snacks available for those inevitable moments of weakness that will arise. Mark Trotter institutes this policy with his own family, which ensures that they eat healthy even on those days where they require a little more food and energy to keep them going. Only stock foods that you would find in a healthy vending machine!
5. Lastly, closely monitor and control the size of your portions. Portion control is one of the easiest and most effective ways to ensure that you do not eat too much food in one sitting. It is simple to do, and there is no excuse for not paying attention to this easy fix. As a general rule, the average portion of any given food should be about the size of your fist

We hope these few tips have been helpful and that they will aid you in creating a healthy eating environment for your family. Following these healthy policies in the home, and snacking from a YoNaturals outside the home (instead of the unhealthier alternatives) will help your family maintain the health that it deserves.

Topics: YoNaturals Vending Franchise | Give Your Two Cents »

Caruso Middle School in Deerfield has a new ‘partner’ in its fight against childhood obesity - a healthy vending machine.

Thanks to a private-public partnership with Stonyfield Farm, the world’s largest organic yogurt maker, Caruso students will be a little healthier and a lot happier today. Stonyfield Farm is bringing its unique vending machine to area schools as part of an expanding program.

The launch comes as Chicago public schools become the focus of efforts to reduce child obesity. The Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children this week holds a two-day summit on how to tackle the problem of overweight, out-of-shape children in area public schools.

Participating in the Chicago area healthy vending pilot subsidized by Stonyfield Farm are Caruso Middle School; the Francis W. Parker School, Chicago; and Alan B. Shepard Middle School, in Deerfield. Additional schools also may be participating.

Stonyfield Farm launched the first healthy vending machine featuring organic and all-natural snacks last fall in Rhode Island to illustrate a point. “People say, ‘Kids won’t eat healthy food,’” says Gary Hirshberg, President and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, “and I know they will eat it - as long as it tastes good.”

The healthy vending machine, filled with an assortment of organic and natural snacks from companies ranging from Organic Valley to Stacy’s to Newman’s Own Organics — as well as Stonyfield’s own organic yogurt smoothies — will provide Chicago area students with the best in taste and a healthier alternative to traditional school snacks.

“We’re very pleased to be entering this partnership with Stonyfield Farm to provide our students with healthier food choices during lunch and after school events,” says Dr. William Ristow, Caruso Middle School principal. “Through our health and consumer education programs, we try to give students information about the effects of unhealthy snacks, and how they can start now to develop healthy habits that will last into their adulthood. This vending machine puts those lessons into practice.”

The machines are now in five states, with requests from more than 600 schools received to date. The machines include products that range from organic drinkable yogurt smoothies to string cheese to pita chips, all natural or organic low-fat and low-sugar products.

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