The Essentials: Build — Catering & Food Service Business

Choose Your Commissary Kitchen Deliberately

A shared commissary, typically $500-2,000 per month for scheduled block time, works well for a new caterer with unpredictable early volume, while a dedicated leased kitchen, $3,000-8,000 per month, only makes sense once you have consistent enough bookings to justify full-time access. Whichever you choose, confirm it has enough cold storage capacity for your largest anticipated event, since running out of refrigerated space mid-week during a busy wedding season is a common and preventable failure, and check loading dock or easy vehicle access, since carrying full chafing dishes down a flight of stairs to a car repeatedly is a real operational cost in time and safety.

Equip for Transport, Not Just Cooking

New caterers often underbudget for transport equipment relative to cooking equipment, but insulated food carriers, chafing dish sets, a catering van or a cargo-rated vehicle, and commercial-grade coolers are what actually determine whether food arrives at temperature and looks presentable. Budget $8,000-20,000 for a starter equipment set covering a mid-sized event (50-100 guests), including basic serving ware, and plan to rent specialty items, tall centerpiece stands, specific linens, chocolate fountains, per event rather than owning everything, since rental keeps upfront capital lower while you're still learning your typical event mix.

Staff for the Event, Not for Your Kitchen Headcount

Most new caterers run a lean core team, often just the owner and one or two regular helpers, in the kitchen, but bring on day-of event staff, servers, bussers, a bartender if licensed, at $20-28 per hour depending on role and market, hired per event rather than kept on year-round payroll. Build a reliable roster of five to eight event staff you can call on short notice, since a no-show server on the day of a 150-guest wedding is a crisis you want a backup plan for well before it happens, not during.

Cost Your Menu Before You Finalize It

Calculate actual food cost per person for every menu item, ingredients plus reasonable waste allowance, and target a food cost percentage of 28-33% of your per-person menu price, which is the standard range that leaves room for labor, transport, and overhead while remaining profitable. A menu that looks impressive but runs 45% food cost will quietly erode your margin on every event, so cost it out with real supplier pricing before you print it on a proposal, not after you've already quoted a client.

A Worked Example: Sizing Your First Commissary Commitment

A new caterer expecting two to four events a month might start with a shared commissary block of 15-20 hours per week at roughly $600-900 per month, enough for prep, storage, and load-out for that volume without paying for a full-time dedicated kitchen you're not yet using. As booking volume grows past six to eight events monthly, the math flips: a dedicated space at $3,000-5,000 per month often becomes cheaper per event than paying for expanded shared-kitchen hours, while also removing the scheduling friction of coordinating commissary block time with other tenants during your busiest weeks.

Don't Skip a Trial Run Before Your First Paid Event

Run a full mock event, cooking, packing, transporting, and holding food at temperature for the actual drive time to a real venue, before your first paying client, even if it means cooking for friends or a discounted charity event. This surfaces real problems: a cooler that doesn't hold temperature as long as advertised, a menu item that doesn't travel well, a packing sequence that's slower than expected under real time pressure. Finding these issues on a low-stakes trial run is far better than discovering them during a paying client's wedding, where there's no room to improvise a fix.

Build Your Recipe Costing Sheets Before You Launch

Create a standard costing template for every menu item, listing exact ingredient quantities and current supplier prices, before you finalize your first client-facing menu. This might feel like unnecessary process for a small operation, but it's what lets you confidently quote a custom request accurately instead of guessing, and it becomes the foundation for tracking food cost drift as ingredient prices change over your first year in business.

Build Relationships With Two Suppliers, Not Just One

Relying on a single produce or protein supplier is convenient until they run short on a key ingredient the week of your busiest event, leaving you scrambling at retail prices or, worse, unable to source what you quoted. Establish accounts with at least two suppliers for your most critical ingredients early on, even if you default to one for regular ordering, so you have a tested fallback relationship in place before you actually need it during a supply shortage or a supplier's own delivery failure.

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