Catering offers a fantastic opportunity to entrepreneurs who have a love of cuisine and entertaining to get started with their own small business.
In the following article we point out ten areas for consideration before you take the plunge and proceed to start offering your services as a professional caterer.
1) Research and Education - Start by researching the catering market in your city. Analyse competitors, assess market demand and try to identify market niches that offer the best opportunities. Try to get interviews with people who have used caterers recently and ask them how you could improve on the services that they had experienced.
2) Experience and Qualifications - While most states don't require you to have any work experience or qualifications to start a catering business, if you have had experience working in the food and hospitality field (or even with another catering business) you will have a big advantage.
3) Local Health Restrictions and Paperwork - As a caterer you will be subject to the regulations set out by local health authorities. Ensure that you are aware of them and set out a plan for complying with them.
4) Where are you going to Prepare Food for Events? - Will you operate out of the kitchen in your home, rent a commercial kitchen or only work with clients who will let you use a kitchen at the place where the event will be held?
5) Insurance Companies - Before starting up your business you must make yourself aware of the insurance cover that you will require in order to protect your company's assets and your company's liability in the case that you are sued for damages by a client.
6) Menu planning - Study current food trends, look at the selections offered by your competitors and start to put together a variety of menus that you can sell to clients.
7) If you don't have any experience as a caterer you should get some practice in by hosting a large event for friends and family members and catering to them. You will definately learn more about what it takes to cater to crowds.
8) Think about the kind of brand that you would like to develop. Brainstorm some names and logo ideas and think about the kind of reputation you want to have in the market.
9) Start Up Funding - It is important that you know precisely how much you will require in the way of start up funding so you should carefully list down all of your anticipated start up expenses.
10) Prepare a Business plan - After you have given the above factors some thought, you can begin to put together a business plan outlining start up costs, administration and marketing methods and goals among other things. Try to cautiously anticipate your expected income and expenditure for the first couple of years of your business and then you can determine how profitable your new business is likely to be and when you can reach breakeven point.
Get your catering business off to the best possible beginning by following these ten steps before you open your doors for business in this exciting industry.
In the following article we point out ten areas for consideration before you take the plunge and proceed to start offering your services as a professional caterer.
1) Research and Education - Start by researching the catering market in your city. Analyse competitors, assess market demand and try to identify market niches that offer the best opportunities. Try to get interviews with people who have used caterers recently and ask them how you could improve on the services that they had experienced.
2) Experience and Qualifications - While most states don't require you to have any work experience or qualifications to start a catering business, if you have had experience working in the food and hospitality field (or even with another catering business) you will have a big advantage.
3) Local Health Restrictions and Paperwork - As a caterer you will be subject to the regulations set out by local health authorities. Ensure that you are aware of them and set out a plan for complying with them.
4) Where are you going to Prepare Food for Events? - Will you operate out of the kitchen in your home, rent a commercial kitchen or only work with clients who will let you use a kitchen at the place where the event will be held?
5) Insurance Companies - Before starting up your business you must make yourself aware of the insurance cover that you will require in order to protect your company's assets and your company's liability in the case that you are sued for damages by a client.
6) Menu planning - Study current food trends, look at the selections offered by your competitors and start to put together a variety of menus that you can sell to clients.
7) If you don't have any experience as a caterer you should get some practice in by hosting a large event for friends and family members and catering to them. You will definately learn more about what it takes to cater to crowds.
8) Think about the kind of brand that you would like to develop. Brainstorm some names and logo ideas and think about the kind of reputation you want to have in the market.
9) Start Up Funding - It is important that you know precisely how much you will require in the way of start up funding so you should carefully list down all of your anticipated start up expenses.
10) Prepare a Business plan - After you have given the above factors some thought, you can begin to put together a business plan outlining start up costs, administration and marketing methods and goals among other things. Try to cautiously anticipate your expected income and expenditure for the first couple of years of your business and then you can determine how profitable your new business is likely to be and when you can reach breakeven point.
Get your catering business off to the best possible beginning by following these ten steps before you open your doors for business in this exciting industry.
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