Professional Caterer's Handbook

This title includes a book and CD-ROM. Do you need a comprehensive book on how to plan, start and operate a successful catering operation? This is it - an extensive, detailed manual that shows you step by step how to set up, operate and manage a financially successful catering business. No component is left out of this encyclopedic new book explaining the risky but potentially highly rewarding business of catering. Whether your catering operation is on-premise, off-premise, mobile, inside a hotel, part of a restaurant, or from your own home kitchen - you will find this book very useful. You will learn the fundamentals: profitable menu planning, successful kitchen management, equipment layout and planning, and food safety and HACCP. The employee and management chapters deal with how to hire and keep a qualified professional staff, manage and train employees, and report tips properly in accordance with the latest IRS requirements. The financial chapters focus on basic cost-control systems, accounting and bookkeeping procedures, auditing, successful budgeting and profit planning. You'll also master public relations and publicity, learn low-cost internal marketing ideas, and discover low- and no-cost ways to satisfy customers. One section of the book is devoted to home-based catering entrepreneurs. With low startup costs and overhead, a home-based catering business can be an ideal do-it-yourself part- or full-time business. Another section is for restaurateurs that wish to add catering to their restaurant operation. A successful restaurant's bottom line could be greatly enhanced by instituting catering functions in slow hours or "down time". For example, many restaurants are closed on Saturday afternoons, so this would be an ideal time to create a profit by catering a wedding. This book is also ideal for professionals in the catering industries, as well as newcomers who may be looking for answers to cost containment and training issues. There are literally hundreds of innovative ways demonstrated to streamline your catering operation. Existing operators will appreciate the valuable resource and reference in their daily activities and as a source of ready-to-use forms, Web sites, operating and cost cutting ideas, and mathematical formulas that can be easily applied to their operations. The new companion CD-ROM contains all the forms from the book in a PDF format for easy use, plus a 100+ page business plan in Microsoft Word.