Читать книгу Start & Run a Catering Business - George Erdosh - Страница 36

Catering is busiest during the holiday season, when both individuals and corporations are expected to invite guests and employees to lavish and elegant parties. Many, many catering clients are only going to call you once a year, during this time. Your year-round clients expect to have you cater their holiday affairs, too. This is the time when you have to be very careful with scheduling events. You can schedule up to your maximum capacity of your equipment and staff, but no more, no matter how tempting it becomes to bring in even more income. You may have many more requests for catering than you will be able to take.

The stress and pressures of working at maximum capacity for 16 hours a day for a little over three weeks can be tremendous, emotionally and psychologically. You are in the limelight during your events, sometimes several times a day, after an extremely demanding time in the kitchen. It is not uncommon to start in the middle of the night and end late the next night. Then it starts again a few hours later.

If you can take the pressure and stress, you will be handsomely rewarded. If you cannot, schedule just a limited number of events, with reduced stress and income. You cannot afford to fail to deliver what you promised to your clients. Doing so will cost you much more than you’ll earn from turning down one more event. Just knowing how much you can comfortably take on for those three weeks will reduce or even eliminate this problem. You’ll learn a lot from your first holiday season, and future ones will be much more under your control.