What are the top 5 stressful thing in the catering business?

Answer 1

I find the most stressful things about catering are:

1. Making sure you have everything you need from all the food right down to the butter knife, you are constantly thinking of things you dont

want to forget and upcoming events can create a few sleepless nights. Make lists! Walk yourself through the whole dinner/lunch and make sure you have included all the supplies you will need. Carry extra supplies with you in the event that serving spoons are dropped and need to be replaced extra sterno

etc.

2. Employees not showing up for work when you have an event and you are counting on them to help with cooking and on site serving and setting up. Always have a back up plan.

3. Traffic - being on time to an event can be hindered by rush hour, weather conditions, accidents on your route to an event which may slow down your commute. Keep up on your vehicle maintainance,

you want to prevent a breakdown if you can, because it usually happens when you don't have time to spare. Again, back up plan!

4. Cash flow, when you are first starting out, trying to maintain a good cash flow to cover costs while you are waiting to be paid for previous events. You will want to purchase things you need to run your business, but don't leave yourself too short of cash on hand.

5. Long hours and little sleep. Catering looks easy, but there is so much more than just cooking... there is shopping, organizing your needed supplies as well as prep. This can take a lot of time! You may need to go to more than one store and may spend hours gathering your supplies. If you want to have food delivered to your kitchen, you end up paying a fair bit more.

No matter how ahead of the game you think you are, its the last hour or so before you need to leave your kitchen that creates the most stress. Everything will be ready at the same time, so multi-tasking

and good time management are a must.

Also, be prepared to go for weeks without any time off, especially when you are starting out and need

to do most of the work yourself.