Become a Caterer – Ten Steps to Start up your own Business

Catering offers an excellent opportunity to enterprising individuals who have a love of food and entertaining to get started with their own small business.

In the following article we point out ten areas to think about before you take the plunge and proceed to start advertising your services as a professional caterer.

1) Research and Education – Firstly you should make sure that you have the right food preparation and you could take some courses in this area and in business management as well. Next, you have to research the market by analyzing what catering industry players are doing in your town and assessing market sectors and demand. Try to interview as many people as possible to find out how you can cater to underserved market segments or how you could improve on the service that other operators currently offer.

2) Do you have Sufficient Experience? – While most states and countries don’t require you to have any experience or qualifications to enter the catering business, if you have had experience working in the food and hospitality industries (or even with another catering firm) you will have a big advantage.

3) Local Health Authority Regulations and Paperwork – As a catering business owner you will be subject to the rules and regulations of your local health authorities. Ensure that you fully understand them and set out a plan for complying with them.

4) How to Prepare Food for your Clients? – Will you operate a home-based business, lease commercial kitchen space ,operate out of a restaurant kitchen after hours or only accept on-site jobs that allow you to use a kitchen at the place where the event will be held?

5) Talk to suitable insurance providers to get an understanding of the policies that a catering company should have to provide cover in case of property damage or liability.

6) Menus -Think about the kinds of menus you will offer clients and start to look for food providers and other providers of supplies in large amounts.

7) Make sure that you can handle the stress of catering for an event by having a practice run. Invite some friends or family members over for a fully catered dinner party so that you can practice your food preparation and service skills.
Building a Brand – Start thinking about an appropriate name for your new venture and put some thought into how you want customers to perceive your business. How can you differentiate your company from the competition? What about your company philosophy?

9) Business Financing – Write down all of your anticipated start up costs and think about how you will cover them. If you cannot fund the business alone then you may have to consider other funding options.

10) Prepare a Business plan – After you have given the above factors some thought, you can begin to compile a business plan outlining set up costs, marketing and management methods and goals and targets among other points. Try to cautiously estimate your expected revenue and expenses 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 should reach breakeven point.

By following these 10 steps before proceeding to start your event catering business you will be giving yourself the best possible chance of finding success.

For our next article on how to name a catering business and to read reviews of some of the top start up kits visit – Start a Catering Company