How to create a business plan for your catering company

Before you take a risk on any business venture, you need to have a solid business plan in place. Of course, if this was all it took to launch a successful business, there’d be a lot more Richard Bransons walking around — the really hard part is executing the plan.

Nonetheless, if you don’t have a well-thought-out and realistic business plan, you’re doomed to fail. Here’s how to create one for your catering business in uk and give yourself the best possible chance of success.

Find your target market

First, you need to find your target market. Weddings, parties, and business conferences all need catering, and you’ll be a lot more likely to succeed if you focus on one niche.

It’s important to pick one clearly-defined target market and build a business around solving one of their specific pain points. You can then build your brand around this sector, which will influence the tone of all your marketing efforts and the way you interact with your customers.

Think of it this way: If you were planning a wedding, would you go with a generic catering company that doesn’t really seem to address your needs, or a caterer that exclusively caters for weddings and has a website full of testimonials from happy brides? You want to be the latter for whatever niche you choose to serve.

How do you decide on your niche?

Consider your connections

Start by thinking about your existing connections. If you have several friends and acquaintances with weddings coming up, it could be a good idea to build a reputation as a wedding caterer, while you might be better served focussing on conferences if you know the owner of a local hotel.

Follow your experience

If you don’t have any existing connections you can leverage, consider your experience and interests. If you’ve attended plenty of business conferences during your career, you’ll already have an understanding of what’s expected from the caterer. This makes it a niche you’ll know how to serve, giving you a greater chance of success.

By the same token, if you’ve never been to a wedding before, it’s probably not a good idea to go into the wedding catering business. No matter how accomplished a chef you are, you’ll find it a lot harder to succeed if you don’t move into a niche you’re already familiar with.

What are your skills?

You should also take your skillset into account. If you excel at making delicious and beautifully-decorated cakes, you won’t be playing to your strengths by catering for business events. Even if you have more connections in the corporate world, you might still be better off catering for weddings.

Is there an unserved niche you can move into?

The last piece of the puzzle when it comes to positioning your catering business is to pick a niche that isn’t already being served. For example, if there’s already a well-established party caterer in your area but no one specialises in corporate catering, you’ll have a much better chance of succeeding if you focus on business functions.

In a crowded market, the more targeted your niche, the more successful you’re likely to be. If there are already a handful of wedding caterers in your area, you could specialise in either formal or casual weddings. In metropolitan areas with lots of competition, you could even specialise in a particular cuisine.

If you’ve found a gap in the market, it’s important to do one last bit of research before you jump in. You need to decide whether the niche is big enough to give you a steady stream of clients. For example, if there are no corporate caterers in your area, that may be because there aren’t enough companies hosting conferences and meetings to sustain a business.