Knowing that there are literally millions of events annually that are catered by companies both large and small and that might be part of the impetus to make you want start a catering business. Work from your home or rent a commercial location, if cooking is in your blood, this could be an ideal business for you.

Setting up a catering business is not as hard as setting up a lot of other businesses but you do have to treat it just like a business and not like a home kitchen feeding your family or making a birthday cake for a loved one.

You should have a business plan in place or at least the outline of one. Many people get a business plan and then deviate some from it because the situation changes, too much business comes in or it makes sense to specialize within your specific niche.

As a caterer you can supply offices with specialty lunches or you could offer your services as a personal chef... or you could do both. Diversity is one of the nice things about a catering business... you are not stuck with just one lane or avenue to go down... you have many options.

You could cover all of the bases available by having the following on your business card:

*Corporate Functions
*Custom Catering
*Full Service Catering
*Personal Catering

Those options cover about 99% of the types of business that is available as a caterer and the verbiage gives you the ability to swing your sales pitch to the customers' specific needs and desires.

The cost to get into the catering business is relatively light compared to opening a restaurant of bar and many times you can just lease time in a commercial kitchen to produce the food for your clients thus saving you the cost of equipment as well as a full time lease on a commercial building.