About the Catering Business

As a professional caterer you’ll find a wide range of catering opportunities for home-based entrepreneurs. Some home-based caterers start out cooking in their home kitchens. Starting out in your own kitchen can keep the initial costs relatively low and you can pass on the savings to your beginning customers. Starting as an in-home caterer does not require expensive equipment, or years of cooking training.

However, in many states it is illegal to sell food to the public that’s been prepared in your home kitchen. You’ll need to check with your state laws to determine if home preparation is allowed. A good way to get around the high startup costs of renting a commercial kitchen, is to use your local church kitchen. You can also try cutting costs by sharing kitchen rental expenses with other caterers. Many caterers opt to install a commercial kitchen in their homes. Installing a commercial kitchen will will mean you need to abide by certain zoning laws. Many caterers start out with their business in their spare time, and since the majority of special events requiring catering services take place in the evenings or on the weekends, it can become a great supplemental income.

Types of Catering Services

• Party food preparation
• In-home catering
• Wedding catering
• Mobile food services
• Event catering
• Specialty foods like cookies or muffins
• Hotel banquets
• Furnishing food for yachts and airlines
• Serving as an executive chef in someone’s home
• Corporate catering
• Gourmet catering

Advantages of Starting a Catering Business

If you love cooking and enjoy food than a catering business might be your calling. Catering to be a great occupation for someone who is creative, social, and enjoys pleasing other people. As a caterer you choose a schedule that’s right for you. Often your work will take place on the weekends or in the evenings, giving you time to work a regular day job, or do other things you enjoy.

Another great advantage of catering is the recognition you’ll receive. As a business in high standing you will develop a reputation around town which will help you generate good word of mouth business. Catering can also provide a very appealing income potential. Successful caterers who have been in business for several years, and have built up a network of clientele can expect to earn $70,000, to $100,000 a year.

Disadvantages of Catering

The catering business is tough in the sense that there is a good amount of stressful work and planning required to be a success. The food business has some of the highest rates of failures among any type of new business. As a caterer you will be required to generate new customer leads, meet with potential clients, and put together competitive bids. You will need to be able to handle crisis as they happen, and deal with many different types of people and their ever-changing demands.

Starting a new catering business often means you have to do the cooking, serving, cleanup, and billing. Sure you can hire people to do these things, however when starting out that is often impractical.

While some people feel that working weekends and evenings is the ideal work schedule, many people would rather have those times off, if this is you and you’ll find the hours of a catering business to be a disadvantage. In addition to catering can often be a seasonal occupation.

Skills Needed

Being a gourmet cook is not a requirement to operate a successful catering business it does help to have some experience cooking and with the hospitality industry. You should enjoy trying new recipes, and planning meals.

It’s helpful that you enjoy entertaining and have a love for social gatherings and are a personable friendly person. For your new business to take off you really need to have excellent people skills in order to please your customers and keep everyone happy.

Caterers should have working knowledge of cooking, food preparation, food storage, and sanitary working conditions. It’s helpful if you have experience as a manager and have peoper organizational skills. You’ll need to be well versed in creating contracts, and marketing your business.

Catering Home Business Information

Startup Costs – For a professional catering startup you’ll need a minimum of $10,000 on the low end and $50,000 on the high end. If you are starting in your own kitchen you can get started for as low as $1000.
Equipment Required – Pots, pans, utensils, serving equipment, tables, table cloths, linens, business insurance, license, legal fees, and kitchen rental.
(You can rent items initially to cut costs)
Home Based – Yes, can be operated from home
Online Work – No
Hours of Operation – Mostly evenings and weekends. Can be seasonal if focusing on parties (Nov-Jan) or weddings (June-July-August) Can be operated as a part-time business
Catering Rates – Price food at three or four times your cost to compensate for time and effort.
Potential Earnings - $30,000 to $100,000 a year
Catering Resource Links

Catering Resource Guides

Professional Caterers Handbook: How to Open and Operate a Financially Successful Catering Business

If you want to specialize in a wedding catering business than this is the guide for you. This book comes with a cd-rom supplement and contains step-by-step instructions about bookkeeping, the pros and cons of professional equipment, and how to become profitable. This reference book is used and recommended by culinary schools.

Catering: A Guide to Managing a Successful Business Operation

Inside this book you’ll find out how to launch a catering enterprise, pricing your services for profit, hire and manage staff, set up your catering kitchen, marketing for your service, event planning, establishing your service, managing the dining experience and more.

Online Course

Starting a Catering Business Course Kit

If you are considering starting your own catering business you’ll definitely want to get your hands on this course. Inside you’ll discover what you need to open your new business, how to know what to charge, the secrets to attracting new clients, handling billing & accounting, cash management, proper record keeping, creating happy clients and growing your business.

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1. Catering Resource Links

Americans are crazy about their pets. In the U.S pets are even more popular than children and there are almost as many pets as people in the United States. Since pet owners work and travel it makes sense that they will constantly need services to care for their pets. Pet sitters can take care of these pets along with many other household duties including watering plants bring in the mail taking out the trash and other household duties.

Is a Pet Sitting Business for You?

If you enjoy working with people and animals the pet sitting business may be ideal for you. Most pet sitters to be successful need to be in operation around seven days a week at city and the serious business that no one should enter lightly and requires dedication and hard work and the ability to deal with problems as they arise.

Your income potential as a pet sitter really depends on the amount of services you provide. If you are checking up on a daily basis you could charge a small fee per visit. However many pet sitters take on other duties such as picking up trash bring in the mail walking or playing with the pets etc. The average pet sitter can expect to earn from $120-$200 a day minus you’re traveling expenses. If you specialize in dog sitting you can also offer in-home grooming services dog training classes and dog walking.

Where Pet Sitting Works Best

Pet sitting works best in high density areas like big cities if you live in a rural area you may have to travel a bit more. Those in more populated areas may be able to service approximately 8 to 12 clients per day based on how our visits and travel time. Your primary market will be working class singles career couples and people who regularly travel. In addition retired people or traveling business people are likely candidates to target for your pet services. You can also pursue new residents to the community who do not have family nearby who may need assistance.

There are several different ways to approach the business of that city

• you could actually live in the home of the pet owner while they are away
• you could open your own home to take care of pets while the client is way
• you could operate your pet sitting business as an agency a referral service to match potential clients to pet sitters
• you can make daily stops at a customer’s home to take care of the pets

Marketing Your Pet Business

A great way to get business as a new pet sitter is through free classified ads in Craigslist or your local newspaper. You may also want to start a referral relationship with other local businesses in your area such as pet stores veterinarian’s or pet groomers. Creating a website presents and a local Google listing for your business is also a great idea.

There are couple great courses available on how to start a pet sitting business. There is a DVD course that shows you everything you need to know about starting a pet sitting business.

You’ll get info on how to attract new clients, and how to manage her time, how to get new pet sitting customers, how to determine if the market exists in your area, and what mistakes to avoid.

Check out the Pet Sitting Business DVD by My Pet Business

There also an excellent book called how to open and operate a financially successful pet sitting business.

This paperback guide will share with you the basic concepts of starting your own pet sitting service. Inside this book you’ll learn the basics of accounting and bookkeeping procedures as well as thousands of great pet sitting tips and useful guidelines. The book also comes with sample business plans you can use for your own business to help you get started as quickly as possible.

Check out How to Open and Operate a Financially Successful Pet Sitting Business

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A lot of people interested in opening a daycare service think they need to have a daycare facility with a playground, full service kitchen, and tons of employees. This mindset couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact when starting out its a smart idea to start out small and grow your daycare business over time.

Why You Should Consider a Home Daycare Center

Starting a daycare from home means fewer expenses, flexible work hours, and much lower overhead costs.

Growing your daycare business slowly will allow you to avoid spending tons of money while starting out, and putting yourself in debt. By opening your child care business from home you can spend more time with your family, as well as save tons of money you would spend on the overhead of renting a building.

Using your own home you can use the existing playground equipment you may already have on the premises. In addition by focusing on providing for small groups of children, you can eliminate the expense of hiring employees.

Here are some of the primary factors to consider when starting a child daycare:

Analyze the Child Care Needs In Your Area

One of your most important tasks before doing anything is to determine the need for child care services in your area. If you live in a small rural area, finding clients may be difficult. So it’s important to check to make sure their will be a demand for your services.

To figure out if there is a demand its necessary to know what types of child care programs people need. Parents usually choose one of three types of child care facilities. These are home daycare, family care, or a day-care center. While starting out it’s recommended you start with a home daycare or family care to cut start-up costs. There are many types of child care programs available to parents in most populated areas. A specialty program may be advisable if you determine a specific need is not being met in your community.

Step By Step Information About Starting a Daycare Service

1. Types of Daycare Programs
   
2. How to Determine Local Child Care Needs
3. Create a Daycare Plan
4. Child Care Cost and Fees
   
5. Daycare Names
   
6. Child Care Legal Structure
7. Open a Daycare
8. Daycare Hours of Operation
9. Child Care Regulations
10. Daycare License
    
11. Child Care Taxes
12. Child Care Insurance for Daycare
    
13. Child Care Safety
14. Structure Your Daycare
15. Child Care Activities
16. Daycare Schedule
17. Advertising Daycare
    

Visit Daycare Authority for step-by-step information about how to start a daycare from home right now.

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2. Daycare Names – Naming Your Child Care Business
3. Open a Daycare – Setup Child Care Center

Starting a freelance photography business

Often freelancers take their hobby of photography and turn it into a full-time income. By taking pictures after work in their free time, or on the weekends they can begin to create a portfolio around the subjects that interest them. Many freelance photographers perform a wide variety of tasks such as taking pictures for the local newspaper, submitting images to stock photo websites, selling pictures to magazines, and even taking Pat or child portraits in their local areas.

Here is a list of some of the ways to make money from a freelance photography business:

Family Photography

• Children photos
  • Pictures of kids sporting events
  • Arts events (dance/gym/recitals/art shows/drama)
  • Birthday party photographer

• Elderly photos
  • Take pictures of older people for birthdays/anniversary

• Pet photography

Business Photographer

• Taking Head-shots
  • Visit business seminars to find clients
  • Visit common areas in hotels where seminars are located or offer seminar promoters a cut of %

• Photo Restoration

• Take Pictures for Websites
  • Offer to take pictures for travel site
  • National landmarks for tourism websites
  • Contact companies who will be at trade shows, conferences, events to take pics
  • Pictures for small business ads

• Business directories
  • Solicit local businesses in your area for photo listings on your own directory site for a fixed, monthly or yearly price
  • Photograph store fronts for business publicity

• Wedding photographer

Sell Stock Photography

• How to sell pictures to stock photo sites
  • Stock photos websites

• Sell physical pictures

• Create custom products from images

• Sell hard copy prints online
  • Print your own greeting cards or postcards
  • Make a theme calendar/ sell on Cafepress or Lulu

Classified Photography

• Sell auction items on ebay. Take picture, list items, upload

• Sell items for people on Craigslist

• Take pictures for apartment listings

Real Estate Photographer

• How to get started as a real estate photographer
  • Approach real estate services to create listings/ brochures / news ads/ displays
  • Offer a service to house renters and real estate agents to take photos of rental properties and  provide a record of the state of the residence before the renter moves in
  • Take digital panoramas for real estate virtual tours that can be created using a stitcher and viewer software

• Create virtual tours

Security Photography

• Create inventory service
  • Take pictures of valuables to protect insurance

• Offer a service to security companies responsible for large events
  • Provide the company with virtual tours of the venue and security hotspots
  • Plan detailed security coverage

Photo Journalism

• Take pictures of newsworthy events/ sell to news sites

• Offer your services to regional papers to take photos of sports events on weekends or out-of-hours events

• Partner with freelance journalist to take pictures to accompany stories

• Pictures for high profile events – singers, speakers, festivals, new year celebrations, party

Publish Your Pictures Online

• Run your own photoblog

• Create online portfolio

• Take pictures of products and do product reviews

• Make money from Google Adsense

• Generate leads for your business

To discover more ways to make money with a camera check out the Paid For Pictures website.

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