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So you want to start a home catering business. First of all, one must be a good cook (with training and professional experience). A catering business can subscribe to a wide spectrum of clients (you must be able to cook from everything to small catered affairs to fancy business parties and weddings). You have to know food, wine, liquor and spirits like the back of your hand...and have the strong desire to prepare and cook food, with or without a medium-to-large staff.

You must also have a professional knowledge of wines, spirits and liquors. Plus you have at least one assistant to help you with the cooking and preparations (you can hire somebody fresh from a cooking school), and several employees to help deliver, set up the food areas, help serve it and clean up afterwards. Recent cooking student graduates need real-life work experience. Talk to teaching staff at vocational and other cooking schools, to find one of their top students, who may be just a right fit for your team. You could find just the right graduate who is a whiz in the kitchen...a student who has discovered their lifelong dream to do good cooking and now has the venue through you to practice it. They don't have to be from the CIA (Culinary Institute of America, either). Additionally, being a graduate, you don't necessarily have to pay them a huge salary. A plus for a new catering business, trying to establish itself.

Have a good business plan, drawn up by a professional, that covers everything in running a catering business from covering the costs of the food, the uniforms, salaries, insurance-to the point where your business could be five years down the road. When your business plan goes into effect, make sure you have enough fridge, freezer, pantry space, and the space to prepare everything. Keep your business plan up to date, reflecting on any changes that may come.

Additionally, have a large enough kitchen with proper ventilation to work in, even investing capital in expanding your kitchen if you have to. You don't want to be cooking in three different kitchens. Make sure your business plan reflects it, or else you'll be cooking for just a handful of people at a time. Or worse yet, you could be tripping over yourself in preparing your famous dishes that your grandma got raves for many years before. Also, make sure you have a large enough vehicle or vehicles to drive around to all those catered affairs. Your business plan should be well written, to reflect all of these things and more.

Always, make sure your kitchen is sanitary and the food is properly stored at the right temperatures. Also, making sure you and all your assistants have taken the necessary food handling and preparation courses to avoid viral and bacterial contamination of food during storage and preparation. Clean and sanitize your food preparation and cooking areas all of the time, as well as making sure everybody under your employ washes and sterilize their hands.

If you need money to start or expand your catering business, look into small business loans. Also, advertise as much as possible through the Internet, anyplace that will be seen by large groups of people interested in catered affairs. Advertising means money to your business. Ultimately, run the business well, offer good meals, and different types of dishes from time to time, show off those cooking skills and your signature dishes. Have fun, but be professional all of the time. Plus, make sure you have good prices. Quality and good prices will always bring your customers back and expand your base of customers. You could end up being a top caterer in your area, with not only a salad bowl of green, but a wallet full of green, in good or bad economic times!

Learn more about this author, Todd Daigneault.
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