5 Keto Business Opportunities You Can Take Advantage Of

For small business owners, skilled bakers, nutritionists and others, changing markets may mean serious keto business opportunities.

Going keto can mean turning your lifestyle upside down. Old products, recipes and lifestyle tips may no longer work for you — meaning you’ll need to find new sources for ingredients and recipe ideas.

As a result, keto has created a new specialty market niche for businesses that can provide products and services that meet the needs of keto dieters.

These are some of the biggest opportunities for entrepreneurs wanting to take advantage of the growing keto market.

Why Now Is the Time to Start a Keto Business

The ketogenic diet, a low-carb and high-fat approach to dieting, originated as a treatment for epilepsy but has since become one of the most popular diets out there. 

Promoters of the trend advertise a range of benefits including weight loss and reduced risk of heart disease. The uniqueness of the diet, which allows for the consumption of high-fat and high-protein foods, is another appeal.

Keto dieters, however, do have to cut out a variety of foods — almost anything high in carbs, including grains, pasta, high-sugar fruits, starchy vegetables and most sweetened food products. They also typically have to increase consumption of fatty and high-protein foods, like meat, fish, cheese, eggs and plain yogurt.

Adopting the ketogenic diet, or “going keto,” is a major lifestyle shift. Because keto is an all-or-nothing diet, people who choose to go keto may need to almost entirely reinvent their diet and lifestyle overnight. This means finding new products, new recipes and new cooking techniques that will fit their new set of needs.

General-purpose diet foods won’t necessarily meet the needs of keto dieters, who are trying to boost fat intake in addition to cutting out carbs and sugar.

The Growing Keto Market

Many new and existing brands have begun offering specialty keto products to meet these new needs.

A quick search for “keto” on any major retailer’s website will return hundreds of items. Walmart’s site alone hosts more than 1,000 keto-related items, for example, and features product categories including “keto foods,” “keto drinks,” “vitamins & supplements” and “tools for success.”

Other sites, like Amazon, host even more keto products from a number of different manufacturers, vendors and small businesses. 

There’s a massive and growing demand for keto items of all kinds, and Google trends data suggests that the keto niche is on track to grow even more over the next few years. 

For entrepreneurs, this means that there’s a major market whose needs are potentially going unmet. These are four of the best potential keto business opportunities for entrepreneurs wanting to take advantage of the new keto market.

1. Keto Specialty Products Vendor

Going keto means giving up on a lot of products and processed food items. Most baked goods and processed snack foods are typically too high in carbs for someone trying to cut sugar out of their diet. 

Keto dieters who still crave sweets often look to specialty bakers, candy makers and other businesses to provide low- or zero-carb alternatives to these foods. 

If you are a baker or cook, learning to create and sell keto desserts could be a great way to market to people going keto. These products are often extremely similar to typical baked goods, but swap sugar for zero-carb sweeteners like stevia or sucralose. 

Several sugar substitutes are available and there is fierce debate over the merits of each option. Careful market research will help an entrepreneur find new combinations of ingredients that other brands haven’t found yet and customers are likely to enjoy.

Other specialty products may be easier to produce or source, allowing entrepreneurs without a baking background to provide specialty products for the keto market.

Nut butter, fruit butter, smoothies, protein or breakfast bars, keto mayonnaise, cooking oils and keto flour are all important ingredients and food products for keto dieters. A specialty food business could find success by providing its version of some or all of these products.

These businesses — whether they consider themselves keto diet providers, bakeries, food and beverage manufacturers or ingredient suppliers — all offer important goods to keto dieters and are likely to grow as the keto market becomes larger.

2. Keto Tips and Lifestyle Blogging

Staying committed to a diet can be a challenge — especially when that diet is keto, which can require major lifestyle changes, like learning new skills and acquiring new recipes or products.

It’s easy for dieters to become demoralized and look to the internet for tips and tricks on staying focused, especially if they’ve just gone keto.

Keto lifestyle blogs and vlogs help provide this support. These businesses provide keto dieters with tips and tricks on keeping keto, as well as recommendations on products, recipes and exercise strategies. They may also provide content on culinary tourism, highlighting keto-friendly restaurants in major tourist destinations or big cities around the world.

For people struggling with keto, these blogs or content sources can provide a lifeline that helps keep them committed. 

Blog runners may monetize their content with ads, merchandise, tip jars or subscription newsletters that provide readers with some additional content.

The lifestyle blog may also act as a content market strategy for another business model — like a keto baked goods store or cookbook vendor.

4. Keto Recipes, Cookbooks and Recipe Videos

Going keto may mean leaving behind a lot of your favorite recipes. Keto dieters often turn to the internet when searching for new recipes to replace their old go-to meals. 

Both written recipes and recipe videos can attract a large audience of keto dieters, as well as people looking to reduce their carb intake. 

Recipe videos require more effort to produce but can provide more value to your followers than written recipes alone.

These recipes can also help to support another business model, like selling keto specialty products, baked goods or similar items.

5. Fresh Ingredients Delivery Service

Almost all keto dieters rely on certain kinds of high-fat, high-protein foods — especially fresh cheese, red meat, poultry and seafood. 

Sourcing high-quality meat can be challenging, especially for keto dieters who don’t have access to a local butcher, deli or fishmonger. 

Meat and dairy need to be refrigerated, unlike many other keto ingredients. This can make shipping fresh ingredients challenging. While certain meat and dairy products can be shipped with normal shipping methods — like dried meat, certain snack foods and cheese powders — many fresh products cannot. 

Most keto dieters are reliant on the fresh meat and dairy selection at their local grocery store — which can often be limited or of lower quality.

A growing number of businesses are offering delivery of fresh meat and dairy to provide keto dieters with more options. These businesses take advantage of refrigerated shipping options and scheduled deliveries to ship fresh ingredients to customers while minimizing the risk of spoilage.

Meal Kits and Other Ingredient Delivery Business Models

Other possible business models include meal planning and delivery services. Many new companies offer ready-to-cook bundles of preportioned ingredients designed to help customers cook weeknight dinners.

These services help to simplify the often daunting task of planning and cooking daily meals. They can also help to reduce waste — preportioned ingredients mean that you won’t need to trash or find another use for leftover prep items.

Both of these approaches help to serve the growing keto market by improving access to high-quality ingredients and reducing some of the challenges that can come with planning keto meals. 

Take Advantage of the Growing Demand for Keto Products

New interest in the keto diet has produced a fast-growing market of people who need new recipes, community support or food items that may be hard to get at the average grocery store. 

Entrepreneurs have the opportunity right now to create new businesses that meet the needs of these customers. Keto ingredient providers, meal service companies, recipe writers and lifestyle bloggers can all help serve the growing keto market, providing goods or services that existing businesses may not offer.

The keto market is likely to grow quickly in the near future, which means that getting started now could put a new business in a good position to expand rapidly with the market over the next few years.