I'm interested in catering cheesecakesin my small town. Can I get some advice how to go about doing this?!
What kinds of things would I need? Where can I buy boxes etc... to transport and put the cheesecakes in? What's a good website for cheesecake recipes? How much would you charge?
Any advice would be much appreciated!
Answers: I live in a really small town. A lot of people do small catering jobs out of their houses. Some do cookies, some do cakes etc... I would like to do cheesecakes. I'm not interested in making lots of money, or anything. I'm a stay at home mom and I'm just looking for something to do. I love to cook and it makes me happy to make other people happy through food.
What kinds of things would I need? Where can I buy boxes etc... to transport and put the cheesecakes in? What's a good website for cheesecake recipes? How much would you charge?
Any advice would be much appreciated!
See if there is a cake decorating supply store near you. They usually sell cake boxes. If not, you might ask at your local bakery or grocery store. They might be willing to order boxes for you. You'll never know until you ask. My husband has a good cheesecake recipe that he got from Alton Brown's show on the food channel. You could go to their website and see what you can find. I'm sure there are others on there. Also, allrecipes.com will have recipes and reviews. The cheesecake my husband makes has almost $10 worth of ingredients in it. I would think you could charge about $20 for one like he makes. His is made in a 9" springform pan, you would want to go by the size of the cheesecakes that you make, too.
This is Good Cheesecake for everyone its called:
Banana Nut Cheesecake
Ingredients:
1 cup Chocolate Wafer Crumbs
1/4 cup Margarine -- Melted
16 ounces Cream Cheese Softened
1/2 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Mashed Ripe Bananas
2 each Large Eggs
1/4 cup Chopped Walnuts
1/3 cup Milk Chocolate Chips
1 tablespoon Margarine
2 tablespoon Water
Instructions:
Combine crumbs and margarine; press onto the bottom of a 9-inch springform pan. Bake at 350 degrees F., 10 minutes. Combine cream cheese, sugar and banana, mixing at medium speed on electric mixer until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in walnuts, pour over crust. Bake at 350 degrees F., 40 minutes. Loosen cake from rim;cool before removing rim pf pan. Melt chocolate pieces and margarine with water over low heat, stirring until smooth. Drizzle over cheesecake. Chill.
First of all, cheesecakes are really expensive to make, and most people like to keep food cost at around 33% of the price you charge for the item. Because of this, huge commercial bakeries in my city (Albuquerque, New Mexico) charge about 30 bucks, but you have to remember that they are paying a fraction of the price for ingredients that we do at the grocery store. If there isn't a huge demand for them, I don't know how successful you'll be at this.
I would go to the closest book store-like Barnes and Noble and look at this book, "The Professional Pastry Chef" by Bo Friberg for recipes. He's got an incredible White Chocolate Pumpkin Cheesecake in there, and he gives a substitution to make White Chocolate Cranberry Cheesecake with it too. White chocolate and I think maple syrup are the only sugars in it, which makes the recipes interesting, but also very expensive.
You're going to need a lot of springform pans, rubber spatulas, etc. You need to find a local bakery supply store for boxes and other supplies like that.
I would find a simple basic cheesecake recipe, and take the amounts for it to the grocery store and cost out how much one cake will cost in ingredients, and go from there. As I said, 33% is the how much the ingredients should cost you. And figure out if it's worth your time. I used to make desserts from home and charge a small restaurant only about double what the ingredients cost, and it really wasn't worth my time. You need to figure out if this is worth your time before you spend any money putting this plan into action. Email me if you have any other questions: frekechild@aim.com
Edit: Another thing to think about is that you'll need to charge enough to recoup the costs of your utensils, pans, and cover some of your utilities. Otherwise you're just throwing money into a pit.
Also once I made a wedding cake with a friend. She didn't want to charge a lot for the cake, so I got paid $50 for 24 hours of work. Not cool. I know that you're not interested in the money, but you've got to be realistic about the time and money investment that you're making. If this ends up taking time away from your family, and you're not getting paid for it in any way, you'll probably end up regretting it. I know I did.
Hope I helped a little bit.
How small a town??
if you don't have the locals going to the deli's or fast foods,,, sorry..
you must look at travelers and they kinda stick to commercial foods or sit down resturants
So you might check with them or ....
Just put an add in the local paper to start.