What is a Catering?
Catering is the process or business of preparing food and providing food services for clients at remote locations, such as hotels, restaurants, offices, concerts, and events.
Companies that offer food, drinks, and other services to various customers, typically for special occasions, make up the catering sector.
Catering Business Ideas In South Africa
Here are great catering business ideas that you can start relatively easily:
1. Food Truck
Starting a mobile food truck can be a great solution for catering to various types of events. You could park your food truck at markets, weddings, outside office buildings, or more.
This will require enough capital to purchase and equip a large enough van or trailer, but it’s still a cheaper option than setting up a normal commercial kitchen.
2. Personal Chef
If you have the cooking skills, you can make some good money by hiring yourself out as a personal chef.
You could specialize in serving exquisite breakfasts and dinners to tourist guest houses, offering special occasion private chef services, or even take on a full-time contract as a private chef for a household.
3. Pre-Packaged Foods
Selling pre-packaged foods is a great idea if you don’t want to do real-time cooking for clients. This could include anything from frozen meals to jams and preserves, pre-packaged snacks, ice cream, or even picnic boxes.
You could also sell pre-made snack platters for parties and events, which means you don’t have to attend the event to cater for it. If your kitchen is small, then this is a good solution.
4. Baked Goods
Starting an at-home bakery is always one of the most popular catering business ideas. You could sell a wide range of baked goods, or specialize in one particular thing – like wedding cakes. This is a good business idea, as you can easily start it from home.
5. Baby Food
Baby food can be a profitable catering business idea, as parents are increasingly looking for healthier, homemade food options for their kids but don’t have the time to make them.
Selling a range of nutritional and tasty baby purees and children’s foods can be done relatively easily from home, and the target market (new parents) is always a big one.
6. Office Lunches
One of the most classic catering business ideas is to provide pre-made lunches to local offices. You could take on a contract where you provide lunch for an office building every day. This could be quite a profitable venture.
7. Organic and Health Foods
People are interested in organic and healthy foods more than ever before, so there’s plenty of demand for these types of catering businesses in the right places.
You could sell healthy pre-made lunches, create juice cleanses, specialize in vegan food, offer organic food workshops, and more.
8. Meal Kits
Meal kits are one of the best catering business ideas as they don’t require you to cook them, and you could attract a lot of repeat business.
This is when you sell recipes with pre-packaged ingredients, all ready to cook. Popular meal kit delivery services offer weekly subscriptions and deliveries, which is a good idea.
Is the catering business profitable in South Africa?
The average catering business in South Africa can make a profit of between R200,000 to R350,000 per annum. South African cuisine is one of the most diverse in the world.
Are chefs in demand in South Africa?
South Africa, like many other countries, suffers a skills shortage of catering employees such as executive chefs and cooks.
In addition, the historical context of South Africa has produced a specific skewed demographic picture of kitchen staff that now needs to be rebalanced.