Are you a restaurant owner who is starting to think about opportunities for expansion? While for some this might mean a second location, or a food truck to travel to local markets, another great idea is to expand your service to catering.
This can be providing your cooking expertise to conferences, events and much more. Here are some things to consider when expanding your restaurant into catering.
Drop-Off Or In-Person?
The first thing you’ll want to consider is the style of catering you’ll be providing. One of these is drop-off catering. This is where you prepare food in-house and then the customer either picks it up from your business or you deliver it to the event.
The other style of catering is in person, where your restaurant takes over a kitchen at the event location and cooks the food there. Each has pros and cons, as you’ll have to think about staffing costs, new kitchen locations and the style of events you’ll want to cater.
Review Your Menu
While you may offer a lot of great dishes on your menu, not every one of them will be suitable for catering services. Dishes that need to be prepared right before serving or are difficult to create might not lend well to catering.
Try to understand what makes your business unique and what customers will be looking for, as this can be vital when picking what to include on your catering menu.
Train Your Staff Or Hire New People
Catering is a very different world to a restaurant, so you’ll need to think carefully about your staff, as they won’t just be able to adapt to the new world. You will either need to train your existing staff on what to expect from catering or hire new staff that will solely be a part of the catering side of the business.
Start Small
Like with all new businesses, you should start small and then expand. This will allow you and your team to get used to the differences between an event and a regular day at a restaurant. You can start small with events such as office catering, which will test your skills at catering without being a mammoth challenge.
Ensure You Have The Packaging To Travel With Food
As you’ll be transporting ingredients and dishes around, you need to make sure you have the correct packaging to do so. These could be reliable containers to ensure ingredients do not leak, or catering size packaging big enough to carry increased portions.
Hospitality Packaging & More From Marshall Wilson
If you’re thinking of expanding your restaurant business into catering, work with Marshall Wilson today to help you out. We are an experienced provider of food packaging supplies, able to supply businesses across the UK with reliable and high-quality packaging.
We have everything from platters and takeaway coffee cups to food packaging and ice cream tubs, so you can find everything you need to provide catering services to your customers.
If you’d like to find out more about how we can help, contact Marshall Wilson today.
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