Cater to Your Love of Cooking--with Catering School Training

Weddings, anniversaries, graduations, office parties: people remember these events long after they're over. Whether it's a good memory or a bad memory largely hinges on the quality of the catering. Caterers feed large groups of people and are often responsible for creating the "ambiance" that gives the group a positive memorable experience. From food and beverages to tables and chairs, decorations, linens, china, stemware, and silverware, caterers may be asked to do it all.

Cooking delicious food and then transporting it somewhere else to be served requires a multitude of skills.

• To work in catering at a restaurant, hotel, or resort, you probably may need post-secondary chef courses to get your foot in the door
• And if you want to be your own boss, you may need additional training classes or courses in the business, legal, and human resources aspects of running a catering company

Catering School Programs Prepare You for Success

In 2005--the most recent year for which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has figures--there were about 11,000 catering businesses and about 147,000 catering employees in the U.S. The BLS expects the job market for cooks and chefs in general to rise about 8 percent between 2006 and 2016 and in 2008.

Whether you want to work for someone else or for yourself, you typically need training to be successful in catering. Enroll in a culinary program. Take classes in the culinary arts, business, and marketing. Before you know it, people should be eating out of your hand.