nellopea

I hear you on the the 20 year old Honda. We're just beginning to look for catering wheels since his motor bike and my 16 year old coupe won't cut it. So did you have help with writing your business plan?

Thanks Edward. You offer some things I hadn't considered, like insurance and contracts. See, we are completely ignorant of the business side!

My husband and I have about 32 years combined professional cooking experience, mostly upscale dining. He's an exec. chef of a small boutique restaurant and I'm a pastry chef at a big hotel restaurant. We're ready to open our own catering biz together and feel we've got all the cooking experience we need, but not the business end stuff. We know we'll have to keep our regular jobs and do this on the side for awhile. How do we get started? We're in a major metroplex and know our geographic location can support another small caterer. We'd like to start buy renting another kitchen since we don't have a bricks and mortar place of our own, and we know we'll need to purchase some small equipment. Assuming we're going to start with events of 100 or fewer people, what equipment should we start with? How do we get our name out there and what are some of the pitfalls we can expect to face? Can two people realistically start a business like this? Would love to hear stories of how other caterers got started.