Doea anyone own a catering business?

[MixWhisk]

I keep having ideas about opening up my own catering business. However, I've heard that they don't make any money.

Does anyone own a catering business? Is this true? I need to factor in providing financially for my DC, so need to weigh up the pros and cons.

Any tips for starting such a business would be much appreciated also. I am very much in the dreaming stage....

Catering businesses aren't huge money makers unless you have capital to invest and a huge amount of experience in the catering industry.

I’m not in the catering business, but I do work in Environmental Health in the food team (so doing food hygiene inspections etc). It will be an incredible amount of hard work. And not trying to rain on your parade, but many food businesses are really struggling during the pandemic, especially small ones. I would estimate that about 80-90% of the new food businesses that we inspect don’t come back up for inspection the second time round - that is, they’re no longer trading 1-2 years later.

Yes and its virtually dead at the moment. Many of my fellow chefs have been ruined and lost their entire business.

Personally I think you would be crazy to even consider this at the moment.

Sorry, I should have said, I'm not considering opening any time soon obviously Maybe when events start happening again in a year or so...

Dh doesn't have a catering business, but he is a supplier to caterers. Honestly, the ones we know are doing very well. Less so at the moment, but they have still been working over the summer. I think there is a difference though between running a burger van and providing something niche and high end. The ones we know are more on the niche, high end side, are professional chefs, work festivals, private parties, do masterclasses, etc. So it's very diversified. They were back to booking private events and masterclasses as soon as lockdown started to lift and have been very busy (though rule of 6 has made it a bit more challenging). I think it really depends what your idea is. Can you sustain it all year round or will you depend on the summer rush? Everyone I know works every weekend all summer as that's when the money is made. Do you have weekends available given any other commitments? It can be really exhausting. We normally do about 8 weekends during the summer months (festivals, selling products, not catering) and it can be a real drag on family life for a few weeks at a time. It depends on how the rest of your life will balance out. Will you still need to work during the week at another job, etc?