Catering Guidelines

1: Research the marketplace.

The first step in launching a catering company is to check out who else is offering catering in
your area. Check out your competitors’ menus, their list of services, prices and customers. Visit
their websites and see if you can quickly find their unique selling benefits. You might think that
successful caterers sell food, but you’d be wrong. Sure, you start with your food, but why should
customers buy that food from you instead of somewhere else?

People who buy catering can get good food from a wide variety of local providers. When they
shop for catering, they look for more than just food—they look for a benefit.To be a successful
caterer, you’ll need to sell convenience, affordability, unique menus, or corporate style or white-
glove service.

If you’re looking to do in-home catering for private parties, contact your friends with a short
survey. Ask if they use catering services, and ask them to tell you why they hired certain
caterers, what they liked about the providers and what they’ll look for in their next caterer.

2: Identify potential customers.

Contact your peers in the business community to find out what their companies look for in
caterers to help you determine what your potential customers want. If you don’t have personal
contacts who can help you, cold-call a few potential customers. Let them know you are not
selling anything and simply want to ask a few questions about what they would like caterers to
offer. But be sure to take time to find the appropriate person at each company to contact,
otherwise you’re likely to get the brush-off.

This will help you gather information about the services that corporate customers want beyond
food (such as set-up, take-down, staffing, a bar, etc.). You can learn how these businesses budget
for catering and how often they use catering. These interviews or email exchanges will help you
launch your business with with a benefit or benefits you know customers will want, instead of
ones you think they will want (“Everyone will love my dim sum carts!”).

3: Choose your niche.

You might think you should start with your catering concept and research how to start your
business from there—but you’re assuming people will like your idea and want to pay for it.
Starting with marketplace and customer research will better help you decide what type of
catering you should offer. Once that you know who your potential customers are, what they want
and what your price range will probably be, you can decide what you think you should offer to
attract enough customers to make a profit.

How to Brand Your Business: A Beginner’s Guide provides valuable information on how to

determine your niche, develop your product or service to target specific customers, and manage
your brand once you launch. You can go very narrow (corporate events) or offer a wide variety
of catering services. But if you try to be everything to everyone, you might end up being
“nothing to no one.” If you want to offer a broad array of catering services, set up different pages
on your website and create different brochures or sell sheets that sell each service separately.
Niche options for a small caterer include:

•Corporate events (cocktail parties, banquets, executive luncheons, golf outings)

•Weddings
•Children’s parties
•Adult parties (anniversaries, bachelorette, birthdays, holiday, dinner parties)
•Boxed lunches
•Concession stands
•Festivals, concerts and sports events

Within your niche, you can further narrow your service by focusing on a specific type of food,
such as barbecue, healthy foods, vegan, upscale menus or affordable menus.

4: Brush up on small business basics.

No matter what type of small business someone starts, entrepreneurs have a number of common
startup tasks to perform. These include getting a business permit from your town or city, getting
a post office box, setting up a website and email address, looking into setting up a corporation
and buying liability insurance. You’ll need to check with your town to see if your business will
meet any zoning requirements and check your home owners’ association rules, if you’re part of
an HOA. Find more tips on small-business startup basics with our guide, How to Write a
business Plan the Right Way.

In addition to these general tasks, you’ll need to contact your state department of health to
determine how to get a food service license and what you need to make sure your kitchen,
storage, transportation and serving equipment meet the necessary standards. Some states require
that you take a course and become a certified food manager, or hire one to prepare and serve
your food.

5: Run some numbers.

To determine what it will cost to start a catering business and what it will cost to run it once you
are open for business, create a budget. Our recent installment on Small Business Budgeting for
Beginners tells you everything you need to know about projecting your expenses for a new small
business.

Plan on spending at least several thousand dollars in startup costs to upgrade your kitchen and
cooking equipment, get your licenses and permits, upgrade your office equipment and marketing
materials, and get the word out. Depending on how large you want to go, your initial investment
could be more than $10,000.

6: Write a business plan.

You will be much more likely to succeed with a catering business if you answer all of the
questions related to your venture before you start, instead of trying to address them as they arise.
A written business plan is not a difficult document to create if you work on it one piece at a time.
Don’t reinvent the wheel—just follow the steps in How to Write a Business Plan the Right
Way (mentioned before) to learn how to create a biz plan that will answer all of your questions
before you risk your first dollar.

Preparing food safely

It's very important to prepare food safely to help stop harmful bacteria from spreading
and growing. You can take some steps to help protect yourself and your family from the
spread of harmful bacteria.

Wash your hands

Your hands can easily spread bacteria around the kitchen and onto food. It's important to always
wash your hands thoroughly with soap and warm water:

 before starting to prepare food

 after touching raw food such as meat, poultry and vegetables
 after going to the toilet
 after touching the bin
 after touching pets

Don't forget to dry your hands thoroughly as well, because wet hands spread bacteria more
easily.

Keep worktops clean

Before you start preparing food, it’s important worktops, kitchen utensils and chopping boards
are clean. If they’ve been touched by raw meat, poultry, eggs or vegetables you'll need to wash
them thoroughly.

You should change dish cloths and tea towels regularly to avoid any bacteria growing on the
material. 

Separate raw food from ready-to-eat food

Raw foods such as meat, fish and vegetables may contain harmful bacteria that can spread very
easily by touching:

 other foods
 worktops
 chopping boards
 knives

You should keep raw foods away from ready-to-eat food, such as salad, fruit and bread. This is
because these types of food won't be cooked before you eat them, so any bacteria that get onto
the food won't be killed.

To help stop bacteria from spreading:

 don't let raw food such as meat, fish or vegetables touch other food
 don't prepare ready-to-eat food using a chopping board or knife that you have used to
prepare raw food, unless they have been washed thoroughly first
 wash your hands thoroughly after touching raw meat, fish or vegetables and before you
touch anything else
 cover raw meat or fish and store on the bottom shelf of the fridge where they can't touch
or drip onto other foods
 don’t wash raw meat before cooking 
 wash, peel or cook vegetables unless these are described as 'ready-to-eat' on the
packaging
Check the label

It's important to read food labels to make sure everything you’re going to use has been stored
correctly (according to any storage instructions) and that none of the food is past its ‘use by’
date.

Food that goes off quickly usually has storage instructions on the label that say how long you can
keep the food and whether it needs to go in the fridge.

This sort of food often has special packaging to help keep it fresh for longer. But it will go off
quickly once you’ve opened it. This is why the storage instructions also tell you how long the
food will keep once the packaging has been opened. For example, you might see ‘eat within two 
days of opening’ on the label.

Use by dates

You will also see ‘use by’ dates on food that goes off quickly. You shouldn’t use any food after
the ‘use by’ date even if the food looks and smells fine, because it might contain harmful
bacteria.

Best before dates

The 'best before' dates marked on most foods are more about quality than safety. When this date
runs out, it doesn't mean that the food will be harmful, but its flavour, colour or texture might
begin to deteriorate.

An exception to this is eggs, which have a best before date of no more than 28 days after they are
laid. After this date the quality of the egg will deteriorate and if any salmonella bacteria are
present, they could multiply to high levels and could make you ill.

If you plan to use an egg after its best before date, make sure that you only use it in dishes where
it will be fully cooked, so that both yolk and white are solid, such as in a cake or as a hard-boiled
egg.

Event Catering Do’s and Don’t’s

Do’s

 Review everything thoroughly. Catering contracts and BEOs normally contain a lot of

information in them. Review them with a fine comb and as you’re reviewing, jot down
the questions that come up. It’s fine to ask your caterer a lot of questions. They’ve heard
it all and if they haven’t, they’ll be more than happy to find the answer for you.
 Be specific with your wants and needs. Be very clear and concise with your caterer.
Are there things you specifically want or don’t want? Spell that out for your caterer so
there are no surprises during the event.
 Provide enough food for your attendees. Catering is quite expensive so you may feel
like cutting counts is the best way to cut costs. This isn’t necessarily true. It’s better to
have more food than less. Attendees won’t negatively complain about too much food
being offered but they certainly would complain if they didn’t get food during the event
due to it running out.
 Consider specific dietary needs. A good handful of people have dietary restrictions
and/or allergies that you must be aware of and accommodate. It’s best to have options for
those who are gluten free, dairy free, vegan, vegetarian, or have a nut or shellfish allergy.
Also, it’s important to have the caterer properly label all food served and indicate if it is
 suitable for any of those special diets. Make sure to give attendees a chance to share their
restrictions either during the registration process or via email. You can list a FAQ about
dietary restrictions and ask people to contact you via email. You’ll also want to ask your
caterer what they can do if someone requests a special meal onsite.
 Get creative! Event catering doesn’t have to be boring. Get creative with the food and
the packaging. If you need to do a box lunch, consider using unique containers like bento
boxes.

Event Catering Don’ts

 Don’t complicate the menu. You don’t want to present too many options to your
attendees as lunch breaks are normally shorter. The fewer options to choose from the
more efficient lines will be. Also, don’t serve super exotic food for larger crowds, like
duck or octopus. No one wants a boring menu but you’ll want to please most of the
crowd, so select menu items that most pallets would enjoy. 
 Don’t make menu changes last minute. You normally have about two weeks from the
event to finalize counts and menus. If you try to change anything after that, not only
could some caterers not accommodate the changes, but it could increase costs
significantly. Plan ahead as much as possible when it comes to catering. 
 Don’t necessarily cut caterer suggestions to save money. If a caterer is suggesting
something, it’s because they feel it would be best to incorporate into your event. Even if
it costs more than desired, consider it before initially eliminating it. For example, if a
caterer suggests you serve teas with the water and sodas you want to serve, it’s not a bad
idea to offer that even though it costs more so attendees have more of a variety of
beverages to choose from.
 Don’t become stressed! Just remember your caterer is a professional. Let them do their
job and take over your stresses so you can focus on other aspects of the event.