My first catering job

bama,
way to go dude!!!!!!!!
once ya get money that makes you a pro!!!!!!!
menu sounds great and i hope that you have fun doing it.
best part is the "oooooooo ahhhhhhhh" factor. thats when you hear people go ooooooo when they see the food and ahhhhhh when they eat it!!!!
jack

Thanks prisonchef. The job is for a lady I work with. She had sampled my Q before. She is having a lot of family in for the holidays so I am going to do a dinner for them all a couple days after Christmas.

Since most of them will be from out of town I will not get much word of mouth advertisement, but I hope to at least get a couple of referrals.

I used to manage Godfathers pizza and I have always wanted to own my own place. But, I went in the Air Force and then got into the technical writing business. This may be a start in the right direction.

Congrats Bama,

You get paid, you've now turned "pro"

Let us know how it goes, we get lots of questions about starting catering and it might be fun to follow your progress.

Russ

Hey Bama,

Good deal.

I thought you were due to come back and see us this month.

Gimmie a call when you are comin'.

Way to go!
Write down everything and try to improve a little bit each time; more jobs are surely comin'!

Bama,
That's so exciting! I sold a jar of sauce when we first started and saved a dollar of what I got. It was a small start, hopefully we'll keep improving. But it is a thrill. I know how you feel. Let me know how your catering event turned out.
Peggy

Well yall, the jury is in.

I just dropped off the food so I had to wait until today to find out how everything went. Everyone thought it was great. There were people in attendance from Rhode Island to Colorado. The lady I did the job for was a little upset because there were no leftovers, everything had been licked clean. One thing she thought was funny was when they saw the mustard sauce, they weren't sure what that was about.

She told me this morning she has a friend who wants to talk to me about doing a college graduation party for 100 people. I'm afraid that might be over my head. I would have to cook for days and then re-heat the meat somehow.

Bama,
I say go for it.

Cook and pull the meat, and put it in foil half pans ("turkey pans"). Add 1/2 or 3/4 cup of your BBQ sauce thinned by half with water, cvover with foil and freeze. When it's time to reheat, an hour in a hot oven will do it.

You can include a 'disposable' chafing dish too, that way they can keep things warm for hours.

100 folks is only maybe 30-40 pounds of cooked product, and as you have already seen, word-of-mouth goes a long way.

Oh-oh, the word of mouth references. I think I see what's going to happen.

High School graduation parties are a snap. We found people don't eat as much at them. It depends a lot one the length of time, type of crowd etc.

We will sell them gallon ziplocks [5#] of pulled pork. We charge $7.50/# in that quanity; $8/# in 5 pounds or less.

I've seen beer drinking college kids throw our quanity figures totally out of whack.

You might want to call the local VoTech or Dept of Health and take their Serve Safe Course. Very valuable info taught there. In MN it's required by law.

Next Lesson: The FE2000

Good Luck! Roger