Catering Business Career Tips

Catering business is most lucrative and profitable home business. This business has high potential for expansion and growth. It is a financially rewarding and enjoyable business. Each catered event such as birthday parties for children, breakfast in bed, intimate candlelight dinners for two, company dinner parties for 50 and wedding receptions involving hundred or more guests is a new experience and challenge with a new group of people. If you are a talented chef and love to spend time in kitchen then catering business at home is a natural step to take. A catering business can be relatively simple to start as compared to other businesses because it doesn’t require a lot of specialize equipment or inventory. There are few things you should take into consideration before deciding to run a catering business at home:

Business Plan

You need to make a general business plan. In your home based catering business plan you should answer some questions like:

• What types of events would you like to cater?
• Is there a market for this type of services in your area?
• How much competition would you have?
• Is there any particular niche you want to fill or quality that would set your catering business apart from others?

These questions are important to run a catering business at home successfully.

Contract

You should prepare a contract detailing:

• What services you will provide?
• What foods will you prepare and how much of them?
• When will you arrive at event?
• What type of serving container will you use?
• Will you provide any plates, cups or utensils?
• Will food be hot or cold?
• Will you need any refrigerator space, water or electrical outlets?
• Will you serve food or remain at event?
• Who will clean up?
• What is cost for your services and when will you be paid?

Food and Business Laws

You should look into food and business laws of your area. You may have to follow a number of guidelines if you want to become fully licensed. One challenge is that several states require food services to prepare food in a specialized zoned commercial kitchen. There are few ways to fulfil this requirement. One is to prepare food in kitchens of your customers. For instance, go over people’s houses before parties. In this case, you are selling your services (cooking) rather than food you have prepared, so you have no need to use commercial kitchen.

Dedicate Space

You will dedicate separate space in your home for various business uses even if you are cooking somewhere else. This space will include an area to store bulk food supplies for catering use, a place to keep your papers organized and for using a telephone and computer.

Business Records

You need to keep thorough catering business records. Save receipts for any payment or food you purchase, plus copy of catering invoices you send to customers. Be careful about records of payment you have received. Catering invoice is most important document to maintain written evidences of payments and receipts. You can prepare your own catering invoice with the help of catering invoice template.

Workforce for Your Business

You should decide whether you will work alone or involve anyone else in your catering business. It can be helpful to have more hands on job. It can also make things more complicated from a business standpoint. If you are in need of employees, you also need to be registered official caterer and certain obligations also incur on your business in terms of Social Security Tax. You can consider setup a partnership if you don’t want to work alone.

Promotional Materials

You should prepare promotional materials like business cards, a website, advertisement and sample menus, promotional flayers. Decide how you will price your services. Let the people know that you are going into business and consider offering to cater a few parties for free to get some exposure for new home based catering business.