Is this for you at all
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Spice is one of the easiest food businesses to start and one of the harder ones to make a living from, and the reasons for both are the same.
What the business actually is
You are buying an agricultural commodity, transforming it slightly, and selling it in a small container with your name on it. There is no cooking, no cold chain, no shelf-life crisis and no kitchen inspection in most jurisdictions at small scale.
The barrier to entry is almost nothing, which is the good news and the bad news in one sentence.
The margin is real and the basket is small
Percentage margins in spice are genuinely good. Absolute margins per jar are small, because a jar of spice is a few dollars and a meaningful share of that is the jar, the closure and the label rather than the contents.
So the business works on volume, on repeat, or on blends people cannot buy elsewhere. A range of single spices competing on price against a supermarket is a hard place to be, and it is where people often start.
What you need to enjoy
Buying well, because sourcing is most of the quality. Repetition, because consistency is the product. And record keeping, because a blend that is the same every time is a documentation achievement more than a culinary one.
If the appealing part is inventing new blends, be honest that inventing is a small fraction of the work and making the same thing correctly for the fortieth time is most of it.
Who should not do this
Anyone who needs it to replace an income quickly. The unit economics make that a long climb, and the capital goes into inventory across a range before any of it comes back.
Anyone unwilling to read a specification. Cleanliness, treatment, volatile oil and labeling are all documentary, and a producer who will not engage with the paperwork is carrying risks they cannot see.
And anyone hoping to compete on price. There is always somebody larger, and the thing you can actually be better at is freshness and knowing exactly what is in the jar.