How to create a catering business plan the ultimate guide.
Starting a catering business can be one of the best businesses to start. With a good business plan you will greatly increase your chances of success because it gives you a road map to follow.
There are some specific steps you should take to give yourself the greatest chance of success with your catering business below I will show you how to create a catering business plan that you can be proud of.
How to create a catering business plan
- Executive summary
- Company Description
- Market Analysis
- Organization and Management
- Service description
- Marketing and Sales
- Financial projections
- Appendix
Why you should create a catering business plan
A business plan is an important tool for any entrepreneur or small business owner. It helps you to define your business goals, and map out a path to achieving them. It also forces you to look at your competition, and your target market to determine your marketing strategy.
A well-crafted business plan can also help you to secure funding from investors or lenders.
In short, a business plan is essential for anyone who wants to start a business. Without one, it will be difficult to make your business successful.
Here is what the SBA says:
executive summary
What is an executive summary?
The executive summary sits at the head of your catering business plan. It gives a quick overview of important information about your catering company like a brief company description, market analysis and pertinent financial information. It should include your mission statement, catering services that you provide and basic information about your leadership team and employees.
How to write a executive summary for a catering business
The length of the executive summary should be about 5 to 10 percent of the total length of the report. The language should be appropriate for the target audience and you need to know who you are addressing.
You would not write the same executive summary for a small local bank as you would for a large investment firm.
Your executive summary should justify the cause or establish the need or the problem and convince the audience it must be solved.
Company description
What is a company description?
A company description provides an detailed overview of you business. It should explain what you do and what makes it unique.
How to write a catering company description
A catering company description should answer the following questions.
Who are you and what is your business. You need to include the company name and any relevant principle owners in the business.
Go into details about the problems our catering business solves and what gives it a competitive advantage over the competition.
Market analysis
You want to show that you have a good understanding of your market. Where is you industry going and how is your catering business going to take advantage of it.
What is trending and what declining and how is your competition fairing with the changes.
There should be a good competitor analysis in this section that talks about your closest catering competitors and what their strengths and weaknesses are.
Organization and management
Explain you your company is structured and who the main management is.
Describe the legal structure of your catering business. Are you a LLC or an s-corp?
Insert a organizational chart that lays out the hieracy chart for the company showing who is in charge of what.
Give a brief description of each person strengths and weaknesses as they pertain to your catering business.
Catering services that you provide
Describe the catering services that you provide and how it benefits your clients. Share your plans for what makes you unique in your offering and how your service has a competitive advantage.
Marketing and Sales
Your goal in this section is to describe how you’ll attract and retain customers. You’ll also describe how a sale will actually happen. You’ll refer to this section later when you make financial projections. Make sure to go into detail about how you will be attracting customers what the retention rate is and how do you plan to improve it.
Financial projections for your catering business
This is where you will want to include all the financials for your catering business
- Year of year growth statement
- Profit and loss statement
- Net profit for last couple of years
- Projected profit for next year
- Balance sheets
- List of assets
- list of liabilities
- Cash flow statements
You should provide a financial outlook for the next 5 years
Appendix
Use your appendix to provide supporting documentation or other materials that were specially requested. Some common items to include would be
- Credit histories
- resume of the owners and CEO
- Letters of reference
- licenses and permits
- any relevant legal contracts.
