Catering Like a Pro : From Planning to Profit

Rating:
Summary: good for a beginner
Review: I think this was an excellent book for a person starting to plan a catering business--minus the large recipe section. It tells you exactly what to expect in this business, and includes helpful sample forms (i.e.billing, invoice) that will surely come in handy. In addition, Halvorsen includes helpful lists for restaurant schools,wholesale markets,kitchen suppliers, etc. for many cities throughout the US. Definitely worth the book price and recommended for someone who is starting out or even thinking of starting a business in the industry because she tells it like it is!

Rating:
Summary: Not so good...
Review: This book was not the best choice for the novice or professional caterer.The content of the book was mostly recipes and advice from professionals which was not the reason why I bought the book.The book barely touched on the importance of contracts,permits and other important info.Overall it was a less than average book and I wouldn't recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: a very good intro to professional catering
Review: When I bought this book we had been catering for awhile on a very small scale. Halvorsen does a excellent job of presenting catering as it really is, hard work, long hours and requires exceptional people and mgt. skills. She offers sound suggestions to help those on a shoe string budget choose wisely and avoid major catering pitfalls. The invoices and forms she uses as examples are more than adequate for anyone to use in their own fledgling business. For a basic book she covers alot of material in a general way leaving you with a outline of the areas you WANT to do more indepth research about. The only problem area for me with this book is the recipe section. I would rather have had a resource list that I could have pulled material from to find recipes elsewhere and had Halvorsen use those pages to cover advertising, taxes, bookeeping and so on in greater detail. Well worth the books purchase price.