Home Catering
If you can・t cook you may well have stopped reading already? I hope not as it is possible to run this kind of business with little or no talent in the Kitchen. A friend of mine recently had a 6 foot subway sandwich delivered as his catering, which was a surprising hit if only for the anecdotes about getting the sandwich in the elevator, taxi etc.
Many people want to hire caterers from time to time, either for big events such as parties or for smaller more intimate gatherings where a restaurant quality meal in their own home is more appropriate than dining at a public restaurant.
Whether it is pitching the big idea to your potential business partner, or asking your fiancees parents for her hand in marriage, there are times where if only you could cook you would prefer to be on home turf. For larger gatherings it can also be significantly more cost effective to use a catering service than to use a large commercial facility such as a Hotel or Conference centre.
If you can・t cook there are two options, partner with someone who can, or
learn. The partnering part should be fairly straight forwards, they will be
doing the hard work in the kitchen and you will take care of everything else,
but with a focus on marketing and administration. If this does not sound like
much then think about the following: -
Getting bookings
Buying supplies
Finding staff (waiters, drivers etc)
Running the accounts
Cleaning up
Training
Setting pricing
Etc. etc. etc.
If you have a friend or colleague who would make a demon cook then you should easily be able to put together a proposal where you would split the profits and assuming you are both available during dining hours there is nothing to stop you looking for jobs immediately.
：Where are the bookings going to come from?； I hear you ask. We have the following
suggestions: -
Friends/family/networking
Advertising
Press Promotion
When you start out your friends and family will be very supportive, but you need to take a different approach with them than you would with most other businesses. Get them to talk to everyone they know about your service. Give them a supply of business cards and ask them to hand them to anyone who may be interested in booking you. It is very unlikely that your immediate circle will book you and if they do you may all feel uncomfortable.
You should advertise as widely as your budget will allow. Yellow pages can be expensive and is only published once or twice a year but should be a staple for your ongoing business. At launch however aim for using flyers in busy shopping areas, or putting them under windscreen wipers in car parks, use local newspaper advertising judiciously and consider using sponsorship, or small billboard advertising to get your name in people・s faces.
Promotions are the accepted norm for this kind of business, it is a people business and you need to make sure that as many potential customers as possible get to hear about you. Some of the following may help: -
Offer 2 free meals to the local newspaper or radio station. One is to be used as a prize and the other is for a journalist and his/her friends. Be sure to specify the maximum number of people at both events. Ideally you should pitch this to a radio journalist who covers a peak traffic time so that you maximise the number of listeners, and to a newspaper journalist who covers business, sailing, golf, polo or some other activity where you are likely to find a glut of customers who may be looking for your service without it being on the cheap.
Write to journalists and offer to do interviews or write an article about your new industry. Promise not to be overly self promoting and to produce something that will be interesting to your readers/listeners.
Offer your service as a prize at local events. For example the annual golf club dinner will have raffle prizes; many charity dinners also do this. You get the name of your company read out in front of a room full of movers and shakers as well as having the immediate friends of the winner talk about your service for weeks afterwards.
None of this come free, but it will help to create a buzz about your business. If you are not the cook you will need to talk this through with your partner, cooking for free and paying for the ingredients is likely to grate a little, but it should pay dividends if you get it right,
When you start out you are likely to need cooking utensils and things that you and/or your partner may not have. Try to get these from somewhere like a local cash and carry so keep your costs down. Equally you can buy bulk items such as salt, sugar, corn starch at the cash and carry.
Don・t cut corners on the main ingredients; be sure to find a butcher who will provide you with fresh meat and good quality cuts. They will be more expensive than buying elsewhere but as you become a more regular customer you can start to ask fro some discounts. The key is ensuring that your customers are receiving top quality food despite it being presented to them in their own homes.
When you take a booking to try and get to see the kitchen facilities before the day of the dinner. If there is no oven for example you may have a problem.
If you start this part-time you may well find that it soon overtakes your main income. It does take some time and effort to build repeat customers though, so be prepared for the hard work of building your business.