13 Feb The First Steps To Starting Your Very Own Catering Company
The restaurant business is as challenging as it is rewarding. When you have a passion for food and cooking, it is usually a restaurant that is the first business to come to mind.
Succeeding with a restaurant is very tricky and many close within the first year or two. Instead of a restaurant, use those passions by opening a catering business instead. Catering has many benefits that make it an easier proposition over a restaurant.
There is less overhead as you only need the space for cooking and not serving food in a dining room. You also need to make sure you have the correct facilities to store your ingredients too. You only have to order food for an event so there is less food wasted in slow periods. And your staff only work when there are events planned so you don’t have payroll to meet when it’s slow.
And it can be done part time. In this article, I will go over how you can get started with an event catering business.
Research your area
Find the caterers who are already established in your area. You’ll need to understand how they are doing to serve the local market.
Take a look at the type of food they offer, the types of events they focus on and what they are charging.
The reason to do this is not to copy their formula, but, rather, to find a gap in the market. If nobody is doing certain items of food such as certain cakes, peach cobbler or cookies then you can capitalise on this gap if there is a demand for it. With this in mind, also know what your customers will want to order, what sells well, and what doesn’t. For instance, even though caviar can last for up to sixty days if no one is likely to order it in this time frame, it perhaps should not be included on the menu.
Besides the type of food you should be looking at the type of service they offer. If everybody is doing white glove service, you can be the one that offers a more casual experience.
There may be a glut of caterers that do weddings but not enough that do family reunions, for example.
Research the market
There are research companies that have all the information you could possibly imagine about the local market. They know how much the average income is, how much money they spend on food and entertainment and what their hobbies are.
Hire one of these companies to provide you with information that you can use to determine if the market needs you and how you can provide the right service. The best businesses are ones that serve a need and not ones that try to create a need.
It’s one thing to research the competition, it’s another to really understand the market.
Write a business plan
It doesn’t matter what type of business you plan to start, you need to have a proper business plan written out. It will help you keep your trajectory fixed so you can see things through and also help secure funding to start and grow your business.
Think of the business plan like a blueprint. You start with the foundation and then add on floor after floor of the building by following the blueprint. It’s the same with a business plan. It helps keep your short term and long term plans in place in an easy to follow manner.