One of the fast growing small businesses in South Africa is catering. If you know how to cook great meals, and your family and friends have told you how much of a good cook you are, then chances are that, this might be a business for you.
Why Start a Catering Business?
- Catering is a service that provides you a chance to showcase your talent and creativity in the aspect of cooking and service delivery
- It is not capital intensive. In fact, you can start a catering business from home absolutely with no money and you don’t even need an office. Your client’s advance payment is enough to jumpstart the business and rent all the equipment you need
Who to cater for?
As a caterer, there are a lot of niches to target. You can choose to provide services to specific niche like events, weddings, parties, business meetings, private clubs, wedding caterers, funeral caterers, birthday party caterers and many more.
Business Plan
Writing a business plan is a very important step when starting any business. There are several things that just must be contained in this. They include; the vision and mission statement of your business, sales projection, succession plans, the overall aim of your business as well as other things that must be contained in it. Click here for a step by step guide on how to write a business plan
Licencing your catering business in South Africa
If you are running a business that sells or supplies meals, take-aways or perishable foodstuff you are required to apply for a licence. You can contact your local municipality’s trade licence department to obtain the relevant documentation and submit your application. You will be required to pay a once-off application fee and your application will be forwarded to five departments to check that all the requirements are met including:
- Environmental health
- Noise and air pollution control
- Public safety
- Urban planning
- Building control
An inspection will then be carried out of the premises by the departments concerned and when the departments return favourable reports and recommend approval, the trade licence will be issued.
Equipments needed to start a catering business
Depending on which types of events you will be hosting, big or small, the start-up capital for a catering business can range between R10 000 and R80 000 in South Africa. You can also rent catering equipment and hire temporary staff to operate your catering business. However, it is always better to have your own equipment so that when events come up you are always ready with your own equipment.
What equipment do you need?
List of catoring equiptment needed click here
You need a team
Catering business isn’t something you could possibly do on your own, you need a team to work with. Here is a list of a team you might need to start out with;
- Chief Cook
- Cooking Assistants
- Sales and Marketing Officer
- Driver
- Servers
- Cleaners / Dish Washers
Registering your business
Types of businesses in south africa
Step by step guide on How to register your business at cipc
Tender
You may also consider getting a tender click here to find out How to apply for government tenders in south africa
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