Important Tips for Your Catering Business

If you are into cooking, you will most likely have thought about doing it on a commercial level and perhaps making money out of it. If you would like to turn your passion of cooking into a worthwhile business, there are some tips you need to consider as you embark on the journey of providing catering services for people and being paid for it.

What Equipment do you have?

Cooking for you and your family can be fun. In fact, it might be something you love to do so much. However, once you start to think about making this passion commercial, you need to think about equipment. The items you have been using to cook for 3 or 5 people will need to be increased and therefore your first step is to do inventory for the equipment you have and the equipment you will need. Sit down and write a list of all the equipment you will need to make sure you go about the catering with ease. It is advisable that you have equipment that is separate from what you are using in your personal kitchen. However, for the start, you can start small and then slowly scale up.

What market are you looking to serve?

Knowing your market is an important element of the catering business. Knowing your market helps you to identify who to approach and it helps you to know the sort of catering services you should focus on. You can not provide catering services to just about everyone therefore you have to zero down on specific markets so that you can concentrate your energies and give them your best. Having a niche market also helps you to become the go-to person in that area and it helps you eliminate certain competition as you will only be catering to a niche part of the market. Consider niche markets that are not so saturated in terms of competition.

Create Lasting Relationships

One very important piece of the catering puzzle is creating lasting relationships. For people to remember that you have a catering business, you have to be in their faces a bit more than usual. Create social media pages and keep reminding people about what you do. Make the pages attractive and progressive. In addition, make sure that when people attend your events, they know who is in charge of the catering. Speak to the people and say hello to them as often as you can. If possible, ask to say a word on the Microphone and thank the guests for coming and then drop a word or two about how they can reach you. Always remember that when you do an event, your next client is most likely someone who is already at your event.

Handle your paperwork

Depending on where your catering business is and what legalities are involved, it is important that you get your paperwork sorted early enough. Have a well documented business plan, get your licence and permits well in time so that you do not have to worry about being on the wrong side of the law. If you need some kind of inspection from authorities, make sure you attain all the necessary permission before you can begin to expand or scale up. You must always remember that no matter how successful your business is, if it is not following the law of the land, you might get yourself and the business in trouble.

Maintain Professionalism

Have a code of conduct and stand by it. Make sure you and your employees meet the standards that you set as standards of quality. Whether it is in terms of food preparation, dressing or set up, make sure that you are professional at all times. Have a menu that people can look at to know what their options are. Have a rate card so that in case someone asks for the pricing of your services you don’t have to think up numbers from your head. Similarly, make sure that your employees have a very neat and tidy dress code that speaks volumes about the quality of your work. People tend to take to caterers who are well dressed, well mannered and professional in the way they cater to their clients.

15th October 2021