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Free catering invoice template for Engineering

hey guys what's going on this is Kyle at projection up and today I'm going to be showing you how to write a business plan for a catering business now this could work for existing but more more likely a startup catering business is going to be the goal here and so what I'm going to be doing is going through a a full example of a catering business plan that's complete with like a fictitious example and I guess the main purpose is going to be as I'm going through the structure and walking through the the different sections and the steps in the business plan there will be five key points that I'm going to really focus on that I think take a business plan from just okay to much higher likelihood to get approved for financing that's kind of the goal and maybe you're wondering you know I guess well who am I and and why can I speak on today's topic again my name is Kyle and before my time with projection up I was actually an SBA loan officer for almost seven years and so during my time there that that consisted of helping applicants you know package together their loan application and all their documentation reviewing their business plans reviewing their projections walking them through underwriting all of that stuff and then since joining with projection hub well not entirely because of me but projection hub has helped over 50,000 small businesses create their financial projections specifically which are a very key component of the business plan and we will get into the projections a little bit later in the video as a part of the business plan so yeah if at any point you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out to us at support projection hub.com you can also leave a comment down the the description or below description in the video we can answer questions there as well and if you find this video helpful please consider giving it a thumbs up and maybe subscribing to our Channel this template this free business plan template for catering business will be available you can get it down the link down in the description below if you want to follow along with your own copy or grab it after the video that would be great so let's go ahead and get started all right so here we have our free catering business plan kind of example that you can grab your own copy of down the description of the video below so it's a fully filled out thicci example so this is not a real cering business but the structure and the layout of the business plan is what a real one would look like or at least in my opinion it would be now this example is going to have you know in many of the sections I would say this is going to be a little bit more generic than you would want to be in your personal business plan and I'll talk about that more as we go so that's one thing you have to keep in mind is you'll want to rewrite every second for your own personal business plan this isn't like a change the names out change a few of the numbers and you're good to go you you'll want to spend time rewriting each section but the helpful thing is the sections have already all been laid out so you can kind of just go in and write your your portion of that for how that makes sense for you and then kind of move on so again I I want to provide some some pointers that can really get your business plan in tiptop shape and so you know before we really dive into this you know I don't know if you if you thought like why why do I need to have a business plan you know especially if we're looking at this through the lens of you're trying to get financing or maybe an SBA loan or something like that you know the purpose of your business plan is not for you to educate the lender on you know what a catering business is or even the state of the catering industry but it's really just to demonstrate your specific road map that you're planning to go from square one to what where where you hope to get to what you hope to achieve and if that's you know paying back a loan if that's being profitable for a long time if that's selling the business someday and your business plan should hopefully you know give the lender or the reader confidence that yeah you've got this mapped out you know if you follow through in these steps which seem like reasonable steps then you should reach your goal of being successful and that can raise the confidence of the lender that's reviewing your business plan so it's not just some words thrown on the page you know it has a purpose and yeah let's go ahead and and kind of keep going going into things here now those five key points I mentioned it'll take us a couple sections of the business plan to get to the first one and then they'll start to happen kind of rapidly but don't worry you won't miss it when we get there I'll I'll slow down and provide some some examples and and some additional information there so first off let's take a look at the table of contents on the business plan you'll notice that one it's not a very long business plan now again I mentioned you might want to write a little bit more into some of these sections just to get some more detail and make sure all the important information gets in there but I would encourage you not to make it a whole lot longer I think it's a myth that longer business plans are better business plans When I Was A lender if someone handed me 100 page when someone handed me a 100 page business plan there was no way everything was getting read in that business plan so that means there was information in in there that got missed and that ultimately is going to hurt the applicant you know the business owner so try to keep it shorter than that 15 page Pages 20 Pages 25 Pages maybe on the longer end if you have pictures and stuff at the end but yeah Jam packet full of the important information rather than scattering it across many many pages the second thing I'll point out is the financial projections are like half the business plan now I'm not just saying this because we're projection hub and I'm and I'm biased but even as my time again in my time as a lender the most important part for a startup loan application I mean it's going to be your financial projections outside of maybe your personal financial situation but that's not really a part of your business plan that's going to happen through different documentation so as as far as the business plan goes the financial projections are probably the most important part and we will we will spend some time talking about those when we get there all right so as we walk along through here we got the executive summary first and I want you to think about the executive summaries like the cover letter for resume for like a job application so it's not going to have all of the information in here but it's going to hit some some of the highlights some of the the key points that you want to make sure your lender is aware of and so excuse me that's going to be some general overview of what the company does what it is where it's located Who's involved that kind of thing and then these objectives remember when I had mentioned that this example is going to be a little generic in some places but should give you an idea of what to put in that this is a good example of that your goals if you're going to include the murderer objectives should be measurable they should be tangible goals so unlike in this case where it says our goal is to establish Kai's kitchen as the premier Japanese catering service in Indianapolis what does the premier Japanese catering service in Indianapolis mean right there's no really metric there to measure that success so maybe a better short-term goal could be like we want to be profitable in 12 months or you know something like that put put a Target on it and for that Target to actually be meaningful to the success of the business same same thing for the long term here we've got aspired to expand our reach Beyond Indianapolis making culinary expertise successible more communities across Indiana that's a great concept but again how do we measure that so is that you know we want to franchise and have other people be able to franchise it is that we want to open up a second kitchen location is that you know which cities and what year years we want to be begin serving in you know Columbus Ohio by you know in 3 years or whatever so just putting a little bit more numbers to that because that gives your your plan your goal a destination or you know that we want to get to rather than just kind of throwing some SWS out there and then we got you know a mission statement and getting some keys to success you know try to make these actual keys to success like things that need to align and if they align well then you should be successful that's what that should be included in there one thing that I think is missing in this executive summary that I liked seeing when I was a lender was a kind of a quick Financial tidbit so that could be your estimated total startup costs that could be how much financing are you seeking that could be your estimated Break Even point you know that kind of stuff you don't have to jam-pack all your financial uh details in there but just some some things there because if I'm A lender reading this and that's the first thing I read that gives me that kind of sets the table that gives me some context as I read through this whole business plan rather than reading reading reading reading reading I get all the way down to the projections and I'm like holy cow they want $4 million to start this business right so you can just kind of do that upfront and kind of help set the table for that because they'll they'll look through the rest of the business plan with a different lens based on knowing how how big is this you know how much money are they going to need that raises the stakes that kind of sets that that context and so that's kind of a helpful thing to do okay moving along to company description this is kind of just an extension of the executive summary but here we're going to shift gears into maybe a little bit more of like the the personality the characteristics of the business itself so the founder story why is is is are you starting the catering company you know what connection does the founder have to making food or that kind of stuff so you can give it a little bit more color here a legal structure it's pretty self-explanatory the unique selling proposition is another one of those examples where if you're not going to be specific then don't include it so your unique selling proposition is kind of what it sounds like what what about it is going to make you stand out um what is it about it is going to make you different and if you just say something like we're going to have the best customer service I'm not knocking a good customer service that certainly does help set businesses apart but what specifically about your customer service sets you apart is there a an experience you create with your catering company that nobody else does where you go above and beyond and people always appreciate it so that would be your your unique selling proposition is make sure it is actually something that's unique you know in catering space that could be if that's a type of food that nobody caters in the city great or at the level you do great you know like really really go to detail on that and then target market prettyy self-explanatory there and we'll talk about that a little bit further down okay market analysis and this is where we're going to get to our first key point at the end of this section so the industry overview I want you to avoid the like if you've seen Shark Tank don't do the like the catering industry is a $2.7 trillion doll industry because I bought this report off of Ibis world that's not what we need to do here the industry overview needs to be like your addressable market like where you are actually potentially get customers from and be realistic with that if that's you know within an hour drive radius or 20 mile radius depending upon like depending upon how densely populated where your catering business is going to be that's probably going to change how large the industry or the addressable Market is but here's where you want to talk about the the boots on the ground like you know your lender may not be you know have a finger on the heartbeat of of what's actually happening in the catering scene locally so you want to kind of set that table for them and you want to talk about you know is it super competitive is it you know primarily driven by like like fast casual franchises like are all the catering options like Chipotle and Jimmy Johns and that kind of stuff and you want to bring a a unique catering specific elevated experience or something like that that's where you can kind of talk about what's what's the the shape of catering where you're located at where you're where you're hoping to to draw customers from competitor analysis probably pretty straightforward but this is very important competitor analysis is super important especially in an industry or a business type like catering because there's a lot of different competitors you know direct competitors are probably going to be other businesses that are just focusing on catering and that's their main thing and especially if there's an overlap with the type of food that you're selling or the experience you're offering price point you're providing or the types of events you're trying to cater so direct is going to be the closer they are to earning a job or a catering opportunity over you that's direct comp competitors indirect competitors are probably going to be kind of like I was mentioning all those other restaurants where somebody could call them up and get food you know for a group of people or for a party or you know Chipotle or something like that but that's probably going to be a little bit more indirect in that regard so if there's a ton of restaurants like that that fit that description in your area you don't have to list all hundred of them but I would encourage you especially on the direct competitors if there's three to five that are your your most close competitors talk about them in your competitor analysis name them describe who they are and kind of what what makes them them talk about what they do really well and maybe talk about weaknesses that they have you know if they have really poor Google like maybe it's a caterer that's been around for a long time so that's their strength you know their people know their name and they have some loyalty but maybe their weakness is they have really poor Google reviews and because maybe they've only been the only competitor in or the only caterer in town and that's something you know they they' failed to do then that's an opportunity for you and talk about that in your business plan okay um again target market analysis you could do a little bit deeper dive over what you mentioned up here so if up here you just talk a little bit you know who's the demographic of the per person you're trying to sell to is that mid-range to upscale weddings or corporate events or that kind of thing and then target market analysis you can go into some greater detail on that market opportunities is probably again pretty straightforward just talking about the industry the market where you're going to be focused what are the opportunities that are presented to themselves okay key Point number one and then we start to roll through these pretty quick and this is market analysis and what the key point is all those things we've talked about so far are they're important they should be included in your business plan you should have your own variation your own spin on that but the key points are tangible demonstrations we can include in your business plan to really drive the point home that you're the lender knows what you're talking about they believe what you're talking about you believe what you're talking about because you've put in the extra work to to demonstrate that and what I mean by that is again provide some specific examples of local research to demonstrate there is in fact room in the market for your business it's one thing to say hey we're going to open up open up a catering business because I think that people will like it you're entitled to do that for a business but for it to work there needs to be a need and you know a demand in your Market we need to try and prove that so here are some examples different ways you can demonstrate that you can conduct a survey you know go out and ask people to fill out a questionnaire you can hire a company to do a marketing research report you know those are all things you certainly can do I there's there's one thing that I like to do that I think is a fun and kind of easy free way to go about this and that is actually don't even see it listed here we we'll kind of wrap it into competitive analysis here so you can go to and make a free account at for Google ads you can make a free Google AdWords account and they have a tool called a Keyword Planner and what this does is it allows us to simulate and see how often are people searching for specific phrases in a specific place and so this will give us some idea of some Trends in that area so I looking for catering near me catering companies near me you know you can see all these examples here and then I set my location that I want to see that in fisers Indiana so Fishers is like a nice suburb outside of Indianapolis cuz that's a it's a smaller addressable Market you know my catering company could serve anybody in that area and probably his surrounding areas right I could probably even back this out to Indianapolis if I wanted to cat it's not uncommon for people in catering business to travel a little bit right okay maybe that's a better example we'll see these numbers all go up quite a bit because it's just a bigger population now this is going to do some a few interesting things one it's going to give us some interesting related keyword ideas so maybe some things you can see people are searching for that you didn't necessarily think to put in there so you can see restaurant Caterers specific businesses right and how much people are seeking those you can see how often people are typically searching those you know you can see even the Peaks right here in those months so those look those looks like those are peaking and the fall going into you know winter which is interesting might be like Christmas parties that kind of thing or you know holiday parties but the most important thing I think this does and is most relevant to what I was just talking about with the compet competitive analysis is this trend data so this shows us is it grow are people searching for this more year-over year or less year year year-over year is it pretty consistent and so we can see catering near me is down 45% year-over-year versus the year before for the 3-month Chang is at 0% 3month change is going to be a little bit more seasonal year-over year is what I'm most interested in and you can see a lot of these down 45% 45% Chick-fil-A up 23% so this is not what I was hoping to see so if I'm putting myself in the shoes of this business I want to see that percentage increasing because that means in general my target area is searching more for catering services than they were before it doesn't really speak to the supply side which is the competitor side which is what I was just talking about before you want to know all of your competitors have an idea of you know is there a good amount of options or people happy with the options that are available but then when you know you have a good feel for the competitive layout then you can paare that with the supply so just because these numbers are negative doesn't mean I shouldn't start my business but what it does mean is that I need to be I can't be coming from a place that says there's a huge increase in demand every single year and so you know people are are searching for it I want to go out there and be findable it's less people your are searching for catering specifically at least in these these search phrases so that means it's going to be more competitive I need to be prepared to steal a market share you know beat out somebody else do a better job at something than somebody else which are things you should already be planning to do but that changes the strategy a little bit okay and so when you're doing something like this you can provide those examples of research and then talk about what that means to your business to your plan okay moving along to section four marketing and sales strategy a lot of things you would expect here list all of you know this is where you're going to talk about exactly what you're going to sell what your prices are going to be all of that kind of stuff how yeah exactly how you're going to price them your sales strategy so here you can talk about like how you're actually going to jum up some business so you know you got promo you got advertising uh distribution channels like where you're going to talk about your products and services you're put on social media you're going to have a website you're going to have Facebook ads you know you can say all that stuff and you should say all that stuff and you should have a plan for that that's kind of a minimum requirement key Point number two similar to like what we just talked about in the first one is going to be demonstrating that we're actually going to have customers in the door and what's better than saying we're going to have a website we're going to have social media posting we're going to do advertising what's better than that is demonstrating that we actually are doing things to acquire customers already okay so what I mean by that is this word traction is popular in like the tech space the tech startup space and that's because a lot of times when they're starting a new software or you know an app or different things a lot of times they have you know they have Alpha testers or beta testers or early users or or whatever before there's a a full public launch or full Market launch and that's kind of their test case right and if they see lots of people that signed up in that test window and there's really good feedback that's that's a good example of traction there's people that are ready to adopt the thing that they're launching similarly you can apply that to a lot of different Industries in some more creative ways and so you know some examples of this I mean these are all these are all great and I think you should do whichever one multiple of these are great to do but some specific ones like I I really like example six it's sounds like the most simple but from a former lender that saw things like this this always meant a lot to me and that is okay maybe you haven't formerly launched your full catering business and you've got the whole website and official launch and you know your advertising maybe you're not to that point yet and you're just now seeking financing to maybe like rent some kitchen space or get some new equipment or a delivery vehicle or whatever um but before that maybe you've been doing it on the side maybe you've been doing it on the weekends or you've been catering to dinner parties or small small parties or small groups and you've refined your menu and you've gotten feedback from those people and they've paid for your services no matter how small include that in your business plan if you've done 17 events and you've made $115,000 in the last 18 months include that in your business business plan that might feel insignificant to you but what that demonstrates to A lender is that you you've got some practice you've got some customers if any of those customers are repeat customers say that you know four of these customers have used our services more than one time and all Rave about their experience right so the two best examples of traction or customer acquisition demonstration are pre-launch Revenue so have you actually made any money before you're requesting your loan even if it's technically a startup and two are names on the list okay so a lot of these other ones are probably going to be more than names on the list is that going to be you know offering a pre-launch booking sign up so if someone books they're going to get a discount because you're just launching getting a bunch of names on the list right so maybe you haven't done any sales but you can say in your business plan you know we've got 173 people that have signed up and are interested in our catering services you know that's really great because you know that's demonstrating your lenders that one there's customers that are actually going to probably show up when you launch and you're not starting from square one with like nobody knowing who you are and two you're hustling you're you're working hard that's a good that's a good example to your lender that you're kind of ready to do what it takes to like you're serious about this okay all right I've get off my so box there okay number five operations and management so here you're going to start talking more about your like the logistics of the business happening again this is all kind of a minimum requirement nothing groundbreaking right here you if you're familiar with catering then this should be up to Snuff because you should know what to write into this section but the key Point here is going to be making sure your lender believes that you know what you're getting yourself into and you know what you're doing and so if you have relevant experience to catering talk about that if that's professional experience that's hobby experience maybe you've are coming from a slightly different career you know maybe you worked as a a in a bakery or you know whatever talk about your transferable skills there you know even if you're coming from a a sales job there's still some transferable skills there and you should talk about those like really good at selling at selling people finding customers if you've done marketing experience before so you be able to like have strong advertising and promotions and all that kind of stuff that's great so talk about that don't don't downplay those skill sets however if you haven't come from an experience where you've managed or operated like a catering business before you need to be prepared to supplement your experience with someone else basically whether that's a partner in the business whether that's a key employee a manager you know you need to make sure that when the lender finds out whatever your experience is that they're not concerned with you know that you're you know what you're getting yourself into and you know all the things to be looking out for and so be prepared by supplementing that you you don't want to you want to have a circle of people around you that kind of leaves no doubt that like okay between this group of people or this pair of people they know what they're doing they they they've been here before they're going to be okay you got to make sure that comes through in the business plan all right now the big one this video is going a little long so I'm going to try to to move through this quickly for you but we're almost there Financial projections are the big one okay so in here we've got revenue projections which this is kind of like some fiveyear overviews of some of the like Main Financial numbers so like Revenue cost good Soul gross profit net income and don't don't leave yet this is usually the section where a lot of startups and business owners get super overwhelmed here's some catering specific projection numbers like estimated catering numbers like order numbers margins on those operating costs we got some key ratios here our monthly operating expenses like recurring expenses so your your monthly bills basically we've got a 5-year projected income statement profit and loss statement fiveyear cash flow projections fiveyear balance sheet projections then we got some like break even and some sales sales stuff there so full disclosure and a quick plug for us all of those charts and those graphs were generated using this template now before you leave yes this is a little bit Shameless plug we are projection of you knew it was coming you have to have Financial projections for a startup especially if you're going to try to get some financing three ways to make projections one hire an accountant or hire a service like us to just make them for you right that's certainly an option you can do it's going to be more expensive but that is an option available to you a second option make them yourself from scratch not the option I would recommend probably going to be really stressful for you and probably a high chance they're not going to be accurate and that's not something I would wish on you either because it's a big red flag to A lender if the first impression of your numbers and your projections aren't reliable it's kind of hard to come back from that third option use a template or a tool made by an accountant you know and a trustworthy source which this template is this was built by a CPA on our staff again I told you we've helped more than 50,000 small businesses create the projections with a lot of success and so I'll just show you how this works quickly it's very easy to use these on your own this template is made to be used on your used on your own we've got four blue tabs where we're putting in some numbers we're only editing things in the blue boxes here right and it's going to be numbers that you know about your business it's pre-filled out with some starting numbers to help you do kind of along your way you've got loans what are the equipments or equipment or assets you need to purchase again this this tab always freaks people out but we're only editing the blue tabs and really what we're just doing is we're kind of laying out our our service menu here the prices involved with those cost of those how much we think it'll growth grow each year what type of um direct labor employee employees are we going to have to work on those again our monthly recurring expenses we're just lining those up here outlining those here and then if there's going to be any salaried employees and ownership compensation we're going to talk about those here and then all of these charts and graphs and all the financial statements you need your lender needs are generated automatically if you make changes on those blue tabs they automatically update over here we have a full video guide walks you through how to fill this out we offer free support So if you're filling it out and you have questions and we offer a free review so if you fill it all out and you want someone to take a look at it to make sure it's good to go okay Shameless plug over so key Point number four is not to create Financial projections you have to have projections key Point number four is are they realistic and within kind of industry norms and you may be wondering like well how do I know if they're within industry norms and it's kind of an unfulfilling answer here for you but like you just go search for them you know nobody just knows in their head except maybe someone who's been in catering for decades just what those numbers are going to be and so we just need to get close they need to be reasonable okay so what I would do is I would open up my projections once you've created your projections and all these numbers are numbers you can look up and compare right so I especially these ones on this tab are kind of key metrics so you can go and search for something like what's a typical net profit margin or net income percentage for a catering business and you can find those numbers one at a time you could use a tool like chat GPT or just like a AI chatbot and have it do the work and give you some results so I can give you an example here of like what's typical number for cost of good sold or Prime cost numbers so let's go back and look at those so cost of good sold here is 70% whereas we were getting this that number is a Prime cost so 60% includes cost of those materials and labor so we're not far off there okay that's good let's let's see what they say about profitability net profit margin 5 to 10% let's go back to our projections and we're at 3% right so we're right in that range okay so that's good that's just a it's a quick practice of like how far off am I if I hand my lender my projections and it says I'm going to have 60% profit something's missing you're not accounting for something right so you just want to do that quick practice to make make sure that they're going to be realistic and ready to go but again if you use one of our templates you can send it to us we'll give you some feedback and review that as well okay that brings us to the end of the business plan we've got one more key point this isn't something you're going to write in your business plan but it's more especially if you're trying to get financing it's more something you just need to have in your back pocket and that's going to be be prepared to demonstrate skin in the game in the application process so when you buy a house you're going to have a down payment and your going to sign your name on that loan and you're going to use your house as collateral if you fail to pay back your mortgage you're going to lose your deposit you're going to lose the house that's similar how it's going to work with the business if you know if you need let's say $100,000 to start your catering business the bank's not going to give you $100,000 they might give you 80 you know 80,000 990,000 right so you're going to have to invest some percent 10 to 20% probably towards that once you get the loan you're going to have to collateralize that loan the best you can so all the assets for the business will will be pledged to that loan so if you fail to pay it back they would take that equipment now catering business is going to be pretty light on the equipment you're probably renting a space if you have space you might have a vehicle right so it's probably going to be under collateralized which means your lender might ask you for personal assets so that could be a free and clear car you own personally that could be a second on your mortgage so some uncomfortable things to talk about and that's just something you need you need to be prepared to talk about if you're not willing to pledge that kind of stuff just know that ahead of time it's going to save you a lot of time and effort if you kind of know what lines you don't want to go across you know your lender might ask you for a co-signer so that can be an uncomfortable conversation but I encourage you to think about who would your coign signer a be before you even know if you would need to ask them and just kind of even have that conversation ahead of time if that's a parent that's a friend if that's a sibling and you you know go ahead and talk to them like I'm planning on doing this this is my game plan if for some reason I would need a co-signer is that something you would be willing to do and just know what options you have it's going to save you a lot of time you're really going to impress your lender if you've already got those things lined up now when you go to talk to your lender don't just like say all these things like hey here's my house and my dad wants to cosign and all these things you don't need to do that you can just hold those cards kind of close to the chest and play them as you need um but know what you're willing to do and my kind of last warning on this this point is going to be when I was a lender a lot of times people would come to me and say that they only wanted the loan to be in the business's name and not they don't want to be attached to it personally that's great advice if it worked that way now that's great advice for like accounting and bookkeeping but when it comes to getting a loan you will be personally guaranteeing that loan and that's just kind of a reality of it so if you're receiving that advice that's not great advice and you just need to be prepared for those risks and so yeah there you have it that is a catering business plan go ahead and grab your copy of this down the description below I didn't mention this earlier but I'll mention it now if you want to get this projection template you can use ph20 BP and that'll get you 20% off of that template which is already less than $100 so I think it might even be $79 so it's a pretty good deal and yeah if you have any questions email us at supporten hub.com also feel free to comment on this video we can answer a question there as well and give us a thumbs up if you appreciated this video yeah we wish you the best of luck your catering business and we'll see you in the next one thanks [Music] [Applause]