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Everything Guide to Starting and Running a Catering Business: Insider's advice on turning your talent into a Career

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I stumbled across this lovely little book a couple of weeks ago. At first I was disappointed that it was written in 2007. I normally only review just released books on Amazon. But I m making an exception for this book because I want to have a record reminding me that it exists and is worthy of recommendation to my SCORE clients. I found the book to be both well organized and well written. It includes an introduction, 20 chapters and three appendices as follows:

0. Introduction
1. What is catering?
2. Understanding the catering industry
3. Required skills for a caterer
4. Getting started as a caterer
5. Researching your business opportunity
6. Developing a concept
7. Being a personal or private chef
8. Developing a catering menu
9. Pricing your services & menus
10. Developing a catering plan
11. Proposal writing
12. Marketing yourself
13. Marketing your business
14. Dealing with clients
15. Considerations as you grow
16. Partnering to grow your business
17. Catering challenges & equipment recommendations
18. Useful catering tips
19. Outsourcing
20. New trends in catering
A. Resources & suggested reading
B. Glossary
C. Personal chef client info form (LDA Form)

It would be so nice if there were more business books written using the Table of Contents for this book as a guide for startup guides on various small businesses. This book could easily be re-written for hair salons, landscaping companies, pizza shops, law offices, etc. It s really an outline for any startup and what should be considered when investigating, researching, and writing a sound business plan to use as a roadmap to success in starting a company.

The business plan provided in this book included the following 8 parts: (1) Exec Summary, (2) Mission Statement, (3) Biz Overview, (4) Market Analysis, (5) Competitive Analysis, (6) Marketing Plan, (7) Operations Plan, & (8) Financial Plan. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to start a small business. Read it and rewrite it for the company you want to start. 6 stars!

PS. I especially liked seeing the plug for SCORE-dot-org at page 126!

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Detail Information

Series Title

Everything: Business and Personal Finance

Call Number

300 Joy

Publisher

Hoboken, NJ : Adams Media., 2007

Collation

324 Pages

Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

1598693840, 9781598693843

Classification

300

Content Type

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Edition

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