Catering equipment supplies can be divided into three main categories: equipment for food storage, equipment for food preparation and equipment for food delivery and service.

Food Storage Equipment
When it comes to food storage, the most important tools are commercial freezers and refrigerators. The size depends on the number of customers your business can cater to. If you’re catering to a large crowd composed of as many as 100 persons, a walk-in refrigerator and cooler is definitely a good idea.

Food Preparation Equipment
Food preparation equipment, on the other hand, ranges from commercial stoves and gas burners to convection ovens and commercial deep fryers. These cooking tools, however, depend on the kind of food you are going to prepare.

There is also a wide range of cookware that you can choose from such as baking sheets, pots and pans. Always choose commercial pots and pans that are sturdy and have solid bases, not just for longevity, but also for guaranteed excellent and efficient cooking. The types of pans to purchase also depend on the heat source you are using, whether gas, electricity or ceramic hobs.

Other tools that you may need to prepare your food include cutting boards, measuring devices, knives, as well as blenders and mixers. When choosing food preparation tools, sturdiness and longevity should be the two main elements that you should require.

Food Delivery and Service Equipment
Such equipment includes tables and chairs, platters, serving utensils, plates, glasses, cutlery, and even table decorations. When it comes to food delivery and service equipment, it is always best to talk to your clients so you can both come up with an agreement. Some clients may choose to use their own equipment, such as tables and chairs, instead of yours. Before the scheduled catering service, know what equipment you are responsible for. It is also important to know whether your clients will conduct an indoor or outdoor event. You will also need to find out if they want full-service or buffet style food.

Catering equipment is the driving force of every catering business. However, during the startup of the business, try to limit your catering equipment supplies first, and choose only those that you really need. As your catering business grows, you will be able to add equipment bit by bit.

Source by Barbara Neitzel

With a home base catering business you can work whenever you want to, wherever. You are not tied down by the limits of your company, your boss, etc.

So what are some things you keep in mind when starting a home base business, whether it be catering or otherwise? First of all, keep no matter what business you are in, remember that you are in the business of marketing.

Even if you are the best caterer in the world, if you are not a good marketer, people will not buy your services. Therefore, you first need to figure out who your target audience will be, and then market to them.

For this, simply decide what crowd you will market to. Whether this be the younger or older crowd, making this decision will decide the course of your business. Now you need to decide which media you want to use to reach them. Whether this be offline marketing, Internet marketing, etc. making this decision is very important.

Remember, no matter which media you use, your offer needs to stand out and be compelling. By this, I mean you can’t simply be another me too out there.

You’ll need a USP (unique selling proposition) in order to get people to buy from your home base catering business. There has to be something about your business that stands out to them. No matter what marketing method you choose, this has to be the case.

Another great tip for your catering business is to not try to sell based on being the cheapest. When this happens you will always be undersold by somebody who comes along and sells their services more cheaply than you. Unless you are Wal Mart and can operate with razor thin profit margins based on pure mass volume of sales, this would not be a good business strategy for your home business.

When you sell based on good marketing, you won’t have worry about other people being cheaper than you, because you will simply out market them. Follow these tips to starting a home base catering business and you will find the process easier than you ever thought possible.

Source by Shawn Mitchell

Fast food is big business. You need only drive down the motorway or walk along a busy town centre street to see numerous fast food restaurants all vying for your custom. The larger chains all offer promotional gifts for the kiddies to lure them through the doors to try some of their delights. The smaller establishments usually go for more upmarket gifts when and if they use them at all. The fact is, promotional gifts work. Give stress relievers a try!

The original fast food stress shapes were the burger and fries. Now you have many more to choose from depending on what type of food you serve. Following are a few stress ball shapes that may be of interest to you.

The Hamburger

This is still the most popular shape. It has a nice large print area on the top bun for your logo and details. Hand them out to all of your customers to remind them that you serve the best burgers in town.

Fries

These are often used as a follow-up shape to the burger. They do go well together don’t they.

Hotdog

The hot dog comes in several different varieties. You can purchase the standard hotdog in a bun or go for the sausage. There are also a few others such as the hotdog on wheels and the hotdog deluxe which is covered with relish, mustard and ketchup.

Fried Chicken

There are oriental chicken shapes and southern fried shapes to choose from depending on the type of chicken you have on offer. You may also be interested in the farmyard chicken.

Fish-n-Chips

Put the before mentioned fries shapes together with the very popular fried cod shape and you have a promotion that will set you apart from the competition. If you serve the best fish and chips in your area, give people a promotional stress ball to remember you by.

Fruit & Vegetable Shapes

Not all fast food is unhealthy food. Numerous juice and smoothie bars are opening up everywhere. Prepared salads are also very popular fast food. You have a very large selection of fruit and vegetable shapes to choose from so find a good online stress balls shop and find the stress relievers that your customers will love.

All of these stress products can be printed with your logo and details. They can also be manufactured in the colours of your choice. There are a lot more shapes on the market so if the idea of handing out these low cost business gifts appeals to you, why not start your search today.

Source by Dan Toombs

Even in tough economic times, the restaurant business keeps on booming, maybe because people tend to dine out with friends, spouse or family on special occasions (and sometimes for no specific reasons). There’s an ever increasing number of restaurants in all major cities of the world, with approximately 1 million in US alone. You are well aware of the phenomenal success that’s achieved by food chains. There are numerous types of restaurants, for instance Chinese restaurants, continental restaurants, breakfast restaurants, quick service restaurants, fast food restaurants or full meal restaurants, Indian food restaurants, Japanese, Mexican, Pizza restaurants, coffee house, seafood restaurants, Thai restaurants, and so on. Not that you need to chose one from this list, you are free to come up with your own unique restaurant.

After the initial planning, you should set out searching for the perfect location. Location is just so important in the success of any restaurant; it is easily the second most important factor after the quality of food. It’s not easy to find an ideal location for restaurant because it must have the visibility and accessibility, at the same time, having a restaurant at a very crowded place is not a good idea either. That makes it a kind of catch-22 situation. Nevertheless, if you can’t get a location with all of these features, just go for a location that gives your restaurant the desired visibility, or otherwise you’ll be required to do extensive advertising in the start.

Next step is to write, design and price a menu. Always design and create menus while keeping in mind your targeted customers, the menu design should compliant with the interior. Spend ample time on pricing, because you need to offer quality food at lower rates as compared to your competitors (if there’s any in nearby locations). There are many pricing techniques (e.g. Price Cost method, competitive pricing or Gross margin method) and you must read into the pros and cons of each method before choosing one of them. Don’t try to put too much variety on menu and effectively highlight the best dishes. Ideally, you must be having one or more specialty, however that’s not compulsory. Chose your chefs carefully and always ask for references. Apart from the chefs, you’ll need to hire an experienced manager and some waiters. Spend some time and resources on training your staff and remember, people prefer one restaurant over others sometimes just because the waiter and staff is more friendly and generous at that place.

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Here are some points you should consider, why starting a restaurant meal delivery service is way better than actually putting up restaurant.

1. Food delivery service is still a new business opportunity.

Pizza deliveries may mean nothing much to you, but the growing number of food businesses that deliver only pizza has proven that there is money in this market. Food delivery businesses allows you to deliver not only pizza, pizza and pizza. You can offer customers with a wide variety of dishes, entrée, and meals customers can only order from their favourite dine in restaurants that do not offer delivery.

2. Setup and start immediately.

Putting up a restaurant, a fast food joint or a simple food kiosk requires not just a few hours of pondering. It needs a longer period of time, for you to plan, and save money to prepare for the extensive expenses you have to yield. Restaurant delivery express service business does not really require a huge amount of investment. You can start with a very minimal investment fund and the planning is shorter compared to setting up your own restaurant.

3. No experience is necessary.

You do not have to be an expert in the food business to setup a restaurant delivery service.

No food expertise is necessary at all. Food delivery business allows you to enter the food industry (which is a multi-billion industry, with a large demand) without the pains of having to undergo gruelling hours of studying, researching the food business framework.

Restaurant delivery business’ framework follows a very simple concept: Sign up as many restaurants to your food delivery list, distribute your menu guide that has your phone number in it and you are now ready to deliver! How do you actually earn from food delivery business? That is by getting into an agreement from several restaurant owners that do not offer delivery.

This can really be crucial because you have to get the restaurant owner’s approval so that they will let you distribute their menu and do deliveries for them, but in return, get their dishes at a lower price.

Source by Joe McVoy