Catering Business Ideas

Celebrity chefs appear ubiquitously on TV these days and have undoubtedly promoted a burgeoning interest in food and cooking. If you’d like to convert your interest into a viable business, though, you don’t need to open a restaurant. For one thing, the start-up costs are eye-wateringly high and they’re notoriously difficult to maintain at profit – many of them go under within the first year. But you can make money by setting up a catering business – and if you haven’t got a big stash of cash tucked conveniently away, you can begin from home rather than renting business premises.

Think carefully about how you’re going to get your new business up and running. Will you begin part-time (as most people do) or will you take the plunge and throw yourself into it full-time? This is a high risk strategy, be warned – it’s probably best not to give up the day job as your first step (you’ll still need to pay bills and eat).

Next, work out which area of the catering market you think you can best fit into – weddings? Corporate functions? Parties? Mobile snacks and lunches to business premises? Do a little market research – you’ll quickly find that you’ll earn quite a bit more by catering for weddings and corporate functions than by lavishing your talents on children’s parties, delightful those these may be. Check what prices are being charged typically by your potential competitors (you can just pick up the phone and ask them).

Work out what service you can provide – are you just going to supply food to begin with, or will you and provide staff, too? If you’re aiming for corporate events and weddings, will you “go the whole hog” and supply silver service? The more additional services you provide, the more people expect to pay. You can charge per hour for any staff you provide.

Work out how many functions you can realistically do each week. As you grow more successful and you get to the point of devoting your energies full-time to the business, you can think in terms of functions per day rather than functions per week or month.

Things you need to know before you are starting catering business

There are a huge amount of health and safety and other legal issues to take on board before you start. You’ll need to register your business with the Food Standards Agency at least 28 days before you begin trading, but you’ll also need to be exceptionally clear that you’re complying with all the legislation and healthy and safety requirements. There are rules governing food preparation areas, food safety management, suppliers and traceability (in the rare but serious event of a public health issue), food hygiene, VAT and record keeping, to mention but a few. The Food Standards Agency produces a very useful booklet which covers all the bases – “Starting Up: Your first steps to running a catering business”, available online at http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/publication/startingup0310a.pdf.

How to make your business work

Always write a business plan. Because you won’t need a lot of capital to get going in catering, you won’t need an elaborate, formal business plan. Every business needs one to keep you focused on your targets. Describe your aims, the market you’re targeting, the products and service you’ll be providing, and include a five-year balance-sheet and cash-flow chart.

If you’ve decided to expand a little and take on staff to help you cater for a new event, you might want to consider hiring temporary contractor staff f though a contractor umbrella company rather than taking on permanent personnel. It’ll take care of all the headaches associated with payroll and PAYE, too.