Whether you are setting up a catering business or are an established business looking to expand, a market to target during the summer is festivals and outdoor events. If you manage to get a good reputation and following at these sorts of events, then hopefully you will be invited back and your summer work may be more assured.
Festivals does not have to just mean music festivals, and there are many other ones throughout the country covering food, literature, theatre and the arts and much more. According to the Guardian, there were no fewer than 50 music festivals alone in the UK during the summer of 2015, making this a potentially lucrative venture for a catering business.
How to Be Successful
If you plan to sell food and drink at festivals or even take partners, suppliers and customers to an event like a Corporate day out in Dublin, then it is vital that you get either the event or the offering right, as you will be competing against many other stalls doing the same thing. http://davisevents.ie/blog/festivals-events/ can arrange a day out for your business.
It is important to have a unique selling point that your competitors cannot match, as well as ensure that your costs and waste are low. This is mainly due to the fact that the cost to have a stall at these types of events can be high, so your other costs should be kept to a minimum. It is probably a good idea to start out with smaller festivals and work your way up. One such festival is the London Coffee Festival, although Hospitality and Catering News reported that 2015 saw a record-breaking attendance of more than 23,000. However, this is still not high in comparison with the numbers who attend festivals such as Glastonbury.
Equipment
Whatever food and drink you are selling, you will need a caravan or a trailer fitted out with all the equipment you need to make and sell your product offering. If you are intending to sell drinks as well as food, you may want to invest in bottle coolers. For your food you will need something to cook on and somewhere to keep food hot and to refrigerate cold food.
Hopefully, this has inspired you to check out the UK festival calendar for 2016 and take your catering business to the heart of the British summer.