The catering business can be equally rewarding and challenging. If you truly enjoy preparing and cooking meals, you will definitely have an edge over other catering business owners who look at their venture only from a money-making standpoint.
That is not to say that your catering business can thrive on your passion for cooking alone. Like other businesses that start off from the owner’s personal interests and hobbies, the catering business requires owners to deftly combine their passion with a keen business sense. After all, you cannot fully support your business operations by simply offering scrumptious culinary creations. No. At the converse side of the coin, you need to always be mindful of your bottom line.
Whether you already have a fully operational catering business or you are just at the initial stage of planning, here are some of the key challenges you may face along the way.
On the food side of the business, it would be beneficial to get training and experience. Although one can start in this business by getting the necessary papers as well as the approval of the health department for your facility, getting proper training will give you a better feel of the food preparation side of the business.
Creativity is also another key challenge in this business. Although many clients think that caterers are essentially the same, if you put a lot of creativity in your work, you can build a solid reputation and get many repeat clients and recommendations.
But these are just a fraction of the challenges you need to face in this business. Apart from overseeing the kitchen and your staff, you also have to put in ample amounts of time, energy and effort toward marketing your business, negotiating with vendors, handling the books, staffing and payroll. Effectively handling these is sometimes deemed to be more important than the food aspect of the business. Even if you have extensive experience in catering, you cannot expect your own venture to thrive if you do not take time to learn the management side of things.
Apart from getting help from specialists, you can get on top of the business side of your catering company by investing in a catering management software like Better Caterer.
Better Cater can help you in different aspects of your business including computing and reducing food cost, writing proposals and invoices, expense tracking, organization and customer management.
Better Cater was developed with the catering business owner in mind. As such, you’ll get a powerful yet easy-to-use software that you can easily master. The developers also took into account the hectic schedule of catering business owners by making the software accessible from a computer or a mobile device.
