Hi! I was hoping someone could help me or give me some ideas. I am in the process of thinking of a home business and I am having a hard time pinpointing what to do. I love to cook and I am constantly experimenting (although i did not go to culinary school), I love event planning (I have experience with a previous job), and I love dinner parties and art. However, my resources and funding is very limited. I was thinking about a dinner party event planner/caterer, but im not sure if that would be too complex. I also thought about catering to very small parties. Would I need a license for that? Any ideas from anyone would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!
Nicole

Hello !
First let me remind you that Rachel Ray has no formal training and look at her now !
What about those "home chefs" or whatever they are called, the ones who come into your home and make like a weeks worth of dinners. I'm guessing that would get you around having to have a commercial kitchen, ect ect.
You would probably still need a biz liscense and insurance, but that isn't too expensive. I know here in Ohio you can not make food in your own home and sell it, but you can have someone else come in your home and cook for you. We used a service like that for my father-in-law when he was elderly and homebound, they came and asked him what he wanted, did the shopping, cooked it all, and packed it in one serving containers for the freezer. All he did was pull something out and microwave it.

Good Luck !

Shelli

Thanks for your input! That sounds great. I would love to cook for other people. I thought for a while it would be good to do that for people who are very busy and didnt have time for home cooked meals but wanted the option. I may look into the licensing more. And very true about Rachel Ray. I am a Food Network junkie and I have noticed that many chefs do not have the "official" training.

Thanks!

Try looking here for info on how to start your own catering or personal chef business:

http://www.smallbusinessstartup.biz/home/

Sylvia
http://businessplanmentor.com
Business plan and start up resources

You can be a personal chef. Catering can get complicated I have a friend in catering and she has to chase people down to get paid. A personal chef comes to your house cooks the food and a check is waiting for them on the counter. No check or money no service. You could do this while your children are in school. Another way to do it is to rent a church kitchen where you can cook for all of the families and then deliver the food. Event planning is a good idea as the client has to come up with all of the money for the supplies.

The personal chef field is a possibility if you have access (i.e. live near) the type of people that would use one. They don't have to be "rich"... If you could target some working upper middle class that are busy and bring them a taste of personalized cooking, I think it could do well.

Start with a simple search on Google (or whatever) for Personal Chef. You'll see some "professional associations" that can give you additional information.

My only caution is that some of the associations look kinda "thin" in offerings for what they want to charge for training and tools. So do some research.

Another suggestion I usually make is to start a website about what you want to do. In your case, you could easily setup a blog on Blogger. Take pictures of the food, include the recipes and try out "cooking for a living". The idea isn't to become an overnight web star with the site... but to see if the idea of cooking and posting makes you more interested in the field... or if it becomes a burden. If it continues to drive the fire... then you are onto something and you move onto the next step. If you end up cringing at the thought of having to cook and document another meal... then maybe it's not a career to pursue.

I've done this myself at http://makoskitchen.com so I can speak from some experience.

Good Luck

Marlin Creek - Idea Seeds
http://marlincreek.com