Starting a Catering Business - What's it all About?

The catering business offers outstanding opportunities to entrepreneurs willing to put the time and effort into starting and developing a successful business. Catering is one of the fastest growing segments of the food and beverage industry in the US. It is a multi-billion dollar industry that has grown at an incredible pace over the past few decades.

A caterer provides services to people who are having events of all kinds. These events usually require you to prepare and serve food and beverages to the guests and to then clean up afterwards.

Caterers rarely work alone as most events are more than one person is able to handle. The coordinated efforts of a small team is usually required. It is therefore essential for caterers to know how to hire and manage catering employees.

Sometimes additional services are required such as decoration of a venue or even arranging a whole event. Event management is a slightly different area but sometimes caterers will take on this role.

As the manager of a catering company you will be responsible for planning menus and service that is appealing to your target market.

There are numerous catering business niche markets to target and some caterers specialize in one area such as weddings or corporate functions. If you go after corporate accounts you will have the chance to get repeat business from a client rather than having to rely on one-off events all the time.

Catering jobs can be divided into either on-premise and off-premise. On-premise refers to jobs where the food is prepared on-site. Off-premise catering refers to jobs where the food is prepared off-site at a remote location and transported to the event. It is estimated that around 60% to 70% of industry sales are from on-premise catering.

Finding suitable kitchen space to prepare foods in commercial quantities is one of the biggest challenges facing a catering business. As a home kitchen is often insufficient, caterers often rent commercial kitchen space by the hour. It may even be possible to negotiate with restaurant owners to use their kitchen space during their down time.

If you do on-premise catering in a banquet hall or some other venue then you can rely on the use of kitchen facilities that are located where the event is taking place.

You must become good at marketing your catering business services. Accurate pricing is important so that you make a decent profit yet don’t overcharge. Learn how to get leads through advertising and other marketing methods. Have a sales process in place that ensures that you make the most of your enquiries and are able to have the best chance of closing the deal.

Planning for an event usually starts weeks before. You will have to assess the requirements of each client and order food and other supplies in the right quantities. You will then have to supervise the preparation of these foods into delicious and visually appealing dishes ready to be served. The final step is to coordinate the service of foods and beverages to these guests. There are also many other tasks that must be performed in order for an event to run smoothly.

If everything is done well, customers will keep coming back to you and they may tell others about your services.

As a catering business owner your time would be divided between the kitchen, events, your office and your clients. You will eventually have some choice here and can delegate staff into certain areas while you focus on others. However you will still have to oversee the whole operation and understand every part of it.

There are many formalities that go along with starting a catering business and running it well such as incorporation, licensing, contracts and insurance. In catering you will specifically be concerned with meeting the rules and regulations of your local health authorities and complying with them at all times.

The catering business is basically all about people and food. If you love both of these aspects of the job you will be off to a great start. Throw some good business sense into the mix and you have a recipe for a really successful business.