Catering Like a Pro: From Planning to Profit

This is a book I used in my research to see if I wanted to start a catering business. This book told me about all the down sides to the business and I quickly realized I did not want to get into the biz. Good start if you wish to research before diving in! The book does have a lot of recipies to use for large events that I use while entertaining.

This book saved me from making a bad decision. My friends kept telling me I made great parties. Good buffet, interesting appetizers, great dinners. They told me I should consider doing it professionally to make extra money. One of the books I read on the subject was this one. It has good recipes, more importantly it describes recipes in a manner that enable scaling for different sizes of event and helps you choose the right recommendations for different size events. It also describes what's involved in actually doing professional catering. I was convinced. Turning a hobby into a business can ruin the hobby. Rather than go Pro, I'll stay a happy amateur; but one with better skills in managing the parties I through.

When I bought this book we had been catering for awhile on a very small scale. Halvorsen does a excellent job of presenting catering as it really is, hard work, long hours and requires exceptional people and mgt. skills. She offers sound suggestions to help those on a shoe string budget choose wisely and avoid major catering pitfalls. The invoices and forms she uses as examples are more than adequate for anyone to use in their own fledgling business. For a basic book she covers alot of material in a general way leaving you with a outline of the areas you WANT to do more indepth research about. The only problem area for me with this book is the recipe section. I would rather have had a resource list that I could have pulled material from to find recipes elsewhere and had Halvorsen use those pages to cover advertising, taxes, bookeeping and so on in greater detail. Well worth the books purchase price.