Online Class: Catering 101

Catering is a little different from cooking in a restaurant. Although both types of cooking involve commercial kitchens and large-scale quantities, restaurant cooks prepare each order individually. Customers arrive, sit down, and order food at different times. A restaurant cook needs to be able to prepare anything on the menu at a moment's notice. Caterers might use a restaurant kitchen, but they do more of their work ahead of time. Caterers usually handle special events, like birthday parties, weddings, funerals, or intimate dinners with friends. In general, all the guests arrive at about the same time, so all the food has to be ready at the same time. Caterers may have a set of menus they use to help customers plan parties, but unlike a restaurant cook, caterers have a lot of freedom in meal planning, and they work with customers to select menus that fit the occasion, personal preferences, and the client's budget. 

If you are interested in becoming a caterer, you do not need to have a culinary school education, or years of experience in the restaurant business; but that kind of background is definitely an asset. What you do need, at the minimum, is a genuine love for food and a talent for party planning. If you enjoy entertaining at home, and your guests are always raving about your food, or if the hustle of cooking for 20 or more guests lights you up from the inside, then you might be a good candidate for a catering business.  

Since catering is a business, it is also helpful to have basic business sense, or be willing to learn. Businesses live or die by profit. If your business is not earning a profit, then it is more of a hobby. If you enjoy your cooking hobby, and you do not mind spending your personal savings to fund the cooking hobby, that is fine. However, in order to have and keep a business, you have to be able to keep track of your expenses, understand how much it will cost you to prepare a specific menu for a party, how much to pay yourself and any employees you hire, and how much to set aside for the future needs of the business. Accurate record keeping is essential for business management, so developing and maintaining a filing system, bookkeeping system, and scheduling system is critical. If you lack organizational skills, then you might want to consider taking on a partner who excels at administrative tasks. 

Since catering is all about parties, it also helps if you enjoy working with people. Parties can be stressful in many different ways: Your client may be spending more money than he or she really wants to, or the event may come with its own stresses, such as family friction. Preparing large amounts of food that all has to be ready at the same time is a big logistical challenge, and if you have to hire people to work for you, then you may have conflict between workers. All these possible stressors create great opportunities for caterers who are calm under pressure, good at smoothing ruffled feathers, and dealing with conflict.  

In addition to cooking for parties, some caterers deliver prepared meals to clients on a weekly basis. Personal chefs might use the client's kitchen, or work out of their own home to prepare a week, or several days' worth of food. The personal chef's clients might be busy professionals who want to eat quality food at home, but do not have time to cook. As a personal chef, you can either assemble full meals that your client needs only to zap in the microwave for a few minutes, or you can prepare a meal the client finishes cooking on their own. For example, you could deliver all the materials for chicken fajitas, including a zip-top freezer bag with marinated chicken, onions, and peppers and a set of instructions directing the client to cook the chicken in the broiler for a set amount of time before serving. Some clients will like doing a part of the cooking, but others will want the convenience of having everything ready, like a TV dinner. Personal chefs cannot compete on price with TV dinners, so they have to distinguish themselves by offering something special, like cooking to the client's health requirements or specific tastes, or providing gourmet flair. 

Whatever brand of catering you choose, success depends on setting yourself apart from your competition. When you first consider getting into the business, make sure you understand what you do really well that no one else in your market can do better for a comparable price. Are you the only kosher caterer in town? Do you make the best lumpia in history? Can you deliver world-class barbecue for $3.50 per person? Do not try to be everything to everyone; figure out what you do best and build your business from that starting point. Using the example above, if you have a kosher kitchen, build a solid repertoire of traditional kosher foods, and network within your synagogue. After a while, your business may branch out into other areas, and clients will ask you to move beyond your traditional items. It is good to go where your business takes you, but if you start out pushing a wide range of conflicting messages, like trying to reconcile kosher kitchen and lobster bisque, then you will have a hard time settling into a groove of machine-like efficiency, and you will confuse potential clients regarding who you are and what you do.