🔒Research an industry using library resources

So you've decided to unleash your inner entrepreneur and wonder how to get started. Perhaps surprisingly, the Portland Public Library is a great place to start. New business-oriented databases are available to library card holders for free and we offer help on how to navigate them. So if your inner entrepreneur wants to start a food cart business, for instance, here's how PPL can help:

1. Find a sample business plan

Using the Small Business Resource Center you can find more than 500 sample business plans for a variety of industries, including one for Eddie Edible's Mobile Food. Although names and addresses for these real businesses have been changed, there is a wealth of information available for a startup food cart entrepreneur. The samples show how other similar business owners have put together executive summaries; company, financing and personnel summaries; descriptions of products and services offered; strategic and market analyses; plans for marketing, organizational structure and finances.

2. Find your competition

Using Reference USA's custom search feature, you can determine if any other mobile food trucks exist in your geographic area. Further, you could look at businesses in other areas where food trucks are popular — say, Los Angeles, Austin or Portland, Ore. — and find websites for these businesses, view their location sales, number of employees, find executive names and contact info … and a wealth of other information.

3. Download legal forms

Using Gale's LegalForms database, you can download and print Maine-specific legal forms such as:

• Food service management agreement.

• Bill of sale of restaurant equipment.

• Employment agreement with restaurant cook.

• Bill of sale of trailer.

There are also helpful checklists — for example, a “small business legal compliance inventory.”

4. Search for information

Using Business Source Complete, you can find all sorts of helpful information on the mobile food service biz. For instance: Full-text journal articles from Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Supermarket News, Vending International, Natural Foods Merchandiser and other trade publications. Users can also find market research reports, product reviews, industry, profiles, SWOT analyses, country reports and eBooks available from a variety of respected resources.

5. Determine the best spot to set up shop

Using DemographicsNow, you can research perspective locations: Enter an address and access the 2012 Consumer Expenditure Comparisons where you can find info such as how much the average person within five, 10 or 20 miles (mileage is customizable) spends on dining out, breakfast and brunch, alcoholic beverages and a list of other food/restaurant-related expenditures.

And, of course, you can still always check out a good old-fashioned book. Using the library's catalog (available online from home) you could place a hold on any of the following titles:

• “Running a food truck for dummies,” by Richard Myrick.

• “The lean startup: How today's entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses,” by Eric Ries.

• “Start and run a restaurant,” by Carol Godsmark.

• “The restaurant manager's handbook: How to set up, operate, and manage a financially successful food service operation,” by Douglas Robert Brown.

Sonya Durney is the business and government team leader at the Portland Public Library. She can be reached at durney@portland.lib.me.us