"licensing" a food product to a restaurant?

[silversurfer]

I have an idea for a food product that would be sold at fast food type restaurant. I worked previously with wholesale food distributors and have priced out exactly what it would cost. I've made many samples in my kitchen.

I am interested in making these and providing a restaurant either with these that they would sell or preferably with a license to make their own following my guidelines.

I know a few people in the food business who do the former. They rent space in an industrial bakery, make their products for 90 minutes each night at 3am and ship them to local restaurants that day. I would probably follow that model because it's the most easily doable and allows me to piggyback on another company's health inspections.

But do any of you know people who created a product and then licensed the formula ala Kentucky Fried Chicken? Do you know how that process worked or are their examples of it working?

THANKS!

[jackpot]

I would imagine that if you would like to license your product, you should first protect it. I don't think that you could patent your product, but possibly a good alternative would be to copyright your recipe. That way you would need to worry about someone stealing your recipe and making it theres. Only than would I consider licensing it. But I would first try to promote/market myself to get some feedback from customers.