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Mobile Catering At Events - No Experience And In Full Time Employment

by Michelle

Hi There,

I'm currently in full time employment and nothing to do with the catering business, however my friend and I are wanting to make a bit of extra money.

We've come up with the idea of hiring a burger van on a day of a festival such as Party In the Park (Leeds) which attracts as much as 70,000 people. Having had no experience of doing anything like this before, do you think it's worth it?
And how would we go about renting a space at a place like that? Who do we approach for the food?

It wouldn't be a full time business goal, however if it was successful (i.e. we made a small profit) we'd probably look at doing it on a more regular basis.

We'd be more than happy to start at car boot sites however having looked at the cost of hiring a vehicle, we're not sure it would be worth it at such a venue in comparison to what a festival would attract... any advice would be much appreciated

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May 22, 2012
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by: David

Hi Michelle


To be honest with you, it's a tall order, especially since you don't have any experience. If you're really serious I would advise you to start working at these events to see how they work and how the professionals do it.

I'm not one for putting people off, but you have to consider that you will be cooking for a lot of people and you will need to get your costing right to make any money.

You will need to have an idea of how much food to cook, how many LPG bottles you will need, not to mention food storage and making sure you don’t run out of food or drink.

To get a pitch like this you will need to contact the event organiser quite early in the year, and then pay some sort of deposit. Now, these types of events won’t be cheap and you may find that the rent could run into the thousands.

It does take a lot of planning and some experience to cater for so many people and you need to make sure that you come away making a profit or what’s the point.

As I mentioned earlier, try and get on board with one of the caterers attending the event and see how it’s done. This will give you a much better idea of what you need to know and do to make your own event successful.

You may want to also look at this interesting post on Event Catering Questions To Ask

For events around the contry - you may want to look at the www.eventsbook.co.uk website

Best of luck

David
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