House 2 House Catering

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  • Takeaway for group events

    I know in a catering blog I should not talk too much about takeaways; after all I should be advocating cooking and food preparation done by you and professionals for large events! Right? Well that is true; I have written countless words about how best to cater weddings, birthdays, anniversaries and the like, but what about smaller scale events? Should you really worry about catering for a bunch of friends who are coming around on a saturday night who just want to put their feet up and have a few drinks?

     

    Of course you shouldn’t, it’s been a long week and the last thing you want to do is be cooking for 5 or 6 people. Instead why not just order in a curry? Throw some cash together as a group and choose what you like, share the rice and naan bread and take the pressure off the hosting and simply enjoy spending some time with your friends.

  • Opening up your own hotel

    The catering topics I have written about in the past have all assumed you were hosting an event and required something, or someone, to come and cater to some very specific requirements. But what about if you are opening your own establishment? Do you need to consider how food will be provided for your guests? What about where they’ll eat? Or what kinds of food your guests should be eating, and at what kind of events.

     

    Are you offering a buffet? If so you’ll need appropriate delivery methods; large troughs, plenty of plates and even more cutlery. What about if you’re planning a fancy restaurant? In that case your menu will need to reflect that; you’ll need chefs, waiters and a higher class of food. Certainly in that case you’ll be looking to attract a higher class of person as well. There are so many things to consider when dealing with your own catering and not just ordering it in.

     

  • Catering – It takes time to understand what’s required

    Catering is one fo those topics. Whether you’ve read countless articles, researched companies, researched locations and various types of events necessary for catering, you have to experience it to understand it.

    There are different forms of catering; buffets, hog roasts and party foods, and the trick to mastering them all is practice! Only then do people discover what’s really involved in catering.

    Timing, presentation and love are three important aspects, and if you can put in the time to develop your skills and improve speed, then you’ll succeed. Presentation skills are hugely important, and if your food doesn’t look nice it won’t get tasted, but of course, you can’t have pretty food that taste’s bland. It’s all about finding the balance, and the more practice you get in the more you’ll understand.

  • Catering Courses for Youths

    There are plenty of different catering courses to choose between, and whether you’re looking to go to a college, or looking to have one-on-one sessions with a catering tutor, you can pick up the skills very quickly.

    Obviously, if you’re a natural in the kitchen, you will have a head start, but you have to put in the time to reap the rewards. The more you study, practice and prepare, the better you will be when you get your own project underway.

    Even if you have a basic understanding on catering and little kitchen experience, you’ll learn the basics and improve your skills on a catering course. The more passion you have, the more successful you will be, and many people have their own dream of setting up a catering business and you could be next.

     

     

  • Catering for your own party

    Catering is often seen as the pastime of the rich; hog roasts, huge tents full of people schmoozing and drinking free champagne. Catering does not exclusively mean that though; even if you are having people over tonight for a few drinks you will still need to cater to them. But what kind of decisions will you need to make? What drinks to provide, what sort of food as well? Are you putting on nibbles? What about ordering in? What about cooking something properly and having a dinner party?


    How you host your night can have a huge impact on the rest of the evening; setting the mood at home, hosting an enjoyable evening will set you up for enjoyment throughout the night, but have a rubbish time at home can really set up your night for disaster; catering is not just about food, it’s about setting up the event and making sure it goes off without a hitch.

  • Supporting local economies

    One key area to consider in the running of any business is how you want to be perceived by people; both customers and your local community. One area to consider when running your own catering business is where, and most importantly how, you are going to be sourcing the things that you need to run that business. Are you going to hire local people? What about the places you are going to get your produce from? One area that people can be quite easily tricked into thinking more about your business is if you are supporting their local community in a very obvious way.


    Get in touch with the local paper; talk about looking for local people who understand the community and its values, talk about how you’re looking to work with local farmers and take on their expertise as well. By tapping into that psyche you’re opening yourself up to a lot of business.

  • Approaching a Catering Specialist

    One of the most common ways in which people are introduced to a catering company is usually by referral from an events management company. Whether they are a catering company getting a referral or are simply a part of the event management company is often unclear, but it typically results in higher costs for you, the client, than if you found and approached a company which specialises in catering.

    This increase in cost is the result of a “cost of referral”, whereby the company providing the referral gets a fee for doing it. While you can avoid this cost by approaching a catering specialist directly, other advantages with such a position are also valuable, in that it gives you a better chance to really find which company is right for you. They, just like a restaurant, have different a unique skills to call on, so some may be more suited to your tastes than others.

  • Working in a Catering Business

    The catering industry can be a pretty exciting place to work, and has a number of differences to the wider restaurant industry. For instance, you’re often required to make different dishes, while in a restaurant you’ll often find yourself repeating the same dishes year after year. In this sense, it can be quite challenging.

    Another big part of catering is logistics, whereby you need to deliver the food after it’s made as quickly as possible to the event taking place. It has a number of roles which aren’t in other sections of the food industry, including a driver for the food. Sometimes however, you may find yourself needing to have a transportable kitchen – preparing food at the event, in front of the guests.

  • Birthday Party Catering Services

    During your birthday party, or perhaps during your children’s birthday, making sure that quality food is very important. Whether it’s for children or for adults, everybody appreciates the extra touch of some high quality food during the event. For parents however, managing the party, the guests, the entertainment, and the food can be a very stressful experience, so when you get the opportunity to give some of that responsibility away to somebody else, you should jump on it.

    Catering services are great because there is a lot of room for people to decide on what food they want available. So, if you’re throwing a party for your child, you can quickly hire a catering service to supply you with great party food which the children and parents will both enjoy immensely. If you do this conjunction with an event management agency, then you can usually find a catering agency which specialises in different types of food.