55 Catering Business Ideas You Can Start Today [2023]

In true Hipcooks fashion: I’m not a culinary school graduate — I’m a hack! Here’s my story:

I’m first-generation American (Mom is from Germany and Dad from Argentina). My parents were young foreign students in the US and their friends were the other international students: I was a kid surrounded by people from different nationalities, like Spain, Russia, France, and the UK. I was a child foodie and loved to experience culture through food.

I caught the travel bug early, living in Argentina (studying economics in college), traveling through Europe, and moved to England for graduate school (I have a Master’s in Economics from LSE.) While in school, I cooked my way through a series of London restaurants in the gastro-boom of the ’90s, just for fun. My first job was on the West Coast, as an econometrician at the RAND Corporation.

The inflection point for me had its origins in both professional and personal life.

Most of my time at Unilever was spent with categories such as Haircare and Skincare. Customers buy brands in these categories for benefits like anti-dandruff. Surprisingly, the same customer ends up making purchases in foods due to taste & refreshment alone. Shouldn’t we be carrying more about the benefits of products that go in our bodies as compared to what goes over our bodies?

The second insight came from my personal life. A backbone fracture led me to three years of Physiotherapy which did not help. I turned towards Yoga and five years later, I came out not only a fitter person but also a changed being. That’s when I started learning and practicing Ayurveda.

Tracy Powell is a Technology Entrepreneur, Real Estate Developer, and Investor. He invested the first part of his business career in investments working for firms such as Merrill Lynch and First National Bank of Chicago and American Express. As a real estate developer and investor with over 28 years of experience, he specialized in urban real estate development. developing 100’s of units of affordable, market-rate, and elderly housing.

The future of your business relies on what you do today. So be at your best, don't dwell on how difficult the past was, bring the lessons that you learn each day as you walk towards your goal.

Tracy is also the founder of Blue Venture Partners a Software Development and IT consulting firm, and Blue Fund Rewards which is a crowdfunding platform that focuses on raising capital for startup businesses and organizations. He is the President of Ignite Technology and Innovation, a not for profit that focuses on creating technology co-working spaces and programming in under-resourced communities throughout the country.

I’ve always been interested in animal welfare, and grew up with at least one or two dogs in the house at all times. During middle school and high school, I volunteered at my local animal shelter in Shreveport, Louisiana. I also became a vegetarian and then a vegan during those years. (I chose the vegan lifestyle primarily out of compassion for animals. Later I learned that it is also beneficial to the environment and one’s health as well.)

My love for chocolate didn’t happen until my mid 20s, after I had moved to New York. I enjoyed visiting the artisan chocolatiers in the city and sampling exotic varieties. For a short time, I worked at a raw vegan chocolate factory in Queens where I developed a best-selling flavor.

Then I adopted a homeless pit bull.

We started the food truck business in 2012.

We kept finding it very difficult to find locations to operate. We had a booker that we used to find our locations but fell short and we let her go. I took over our booking and found that most people did not want to book just one truck, not only that they were upset that most of the time the trucks didn’t show up or were late.

We learned the real need was not only helping the trucks but providing a turnkey service for the corporations. This was a game-changer for us, we were really struggling financially.

Initially, the business idea was just that. We researched some other mobile bars but wanted to fine-tune something that spoke more of the character of Taylor and me. Taylor has always been a craft beer enthusiast. My family history actually owned a dealership for about 70 years, so love for classic cars was in my veins.

Taylor and I did the bodywork on our first truck ourselves. We enjoyed sanding it all day and listening to Drake and Future Songs. So the 1952 Chevrolet panel truck was named Bae. She has been to the Hollywood sign, to Palm Springs, and over San Diego and orange county. We learned a lot from this first truck build, what to do, and probably more importantly as an entrepreneur what not to do.

Our validation really came in launching the truck with the feedback we would get. If you are a fan of vintage Americana, Craft brews, or classic cars then you are a fan of Tap Truck. Seeing people's eyes light up at the sight of Bae was a huge relief that we might be onto something. Still, a favorite of mine is when you hit a certain part in the reception where all the groomsmen want to see under the hood!

I started the blog in 2014 while wrapping up a degree in nutrition. Instead of pursuing a postgraduate dietetic internship to become a Registered Dietitian, I started a personal training business. The blog was a side project and portfolio for freelance writing until 2017 when I decided to take the leap and work on it full time.

Perfect is the enemy of good. If I’d waited for perfection to start, I’d still be waiting.

While the blog was only making a few hundred dollars per month at that point, I’d read a ton of success stories and saw huge potential in blogging. So I quit everything else, cashed in enough savings to give myself a 6-month runway, and started publishing as much content as possible.

My cousin Sam and I had run and sold several businesses before starting Consulting Success®, working with clients like Panasonic, Dow Jones, The Financial Times, Royal Bank, and more. We were at a good place with our consulting businesses. However, we wanted to build a business that allowed us to work from anywhere — one that gave us the freedom to travel the world and spend more time with our families.

We started Consulting Success® 11 years ago without a monetization plan, simply sharing what had worked (and didn’t work) for us in our prior consulting businesses. We wrote a lot of content about consulting: how to win clients, how to price your services, how to converse with your clients, etc. Our goal was to help up and coming consultants implement the best practices that worked for us.

Before Cape Whoopies was conceived, I was enjoying being the mom of two kids in high school, the wife to an airline pilot, and an aerobics teacher at my local gym.

When my kids had gone off to college and my husband was in the air, I had much time on my hands. There was only so much time you could spend at the gym, so with the newfound extra time I splurged in one of the things I always loved doing: making delicious baked things for friends.

My husband and I spend time a local restaurant as a hangout when he was home, so we would go to DiMillos and take our server friends whoopie pies. Why whoopie pies? I had tasted the Maine creation and thought, "good idea, not great execution".

Hey, my name is Brandon Nolte, and I am one of the cofounders of Stello. After +8 years and +$10 million in sales in the CBD space, I decided to create a new company: Stello -- stress diffusing mint that helps you get calm and clear-minded, no matter what’s getting in your way.

Tripadvisor was founded by co-founders Stephen Kaufer, Langley Steinert, Nick Shanny, and Thomas Palka in February 2000. When they first launched Tripadvisor, they emphasized official words from newspapers, guidebooks, or magazines.

Tripadvisor, now the world’s leading travel advice network, assists hundreds of millions of people in becoming better travelers, from planning to booking to traveling.

Travelers use Tripadvisor to get bargains on lodgings, book activities, reserve tables at wonderful restaurants, and discover excellent locations nearby.

Kaufer co-founded TripAdvisor in 2000 to assist tourists worldwide in planning and having the perfect trip. The business idea came about when Steve was preparing for a vacation, and he searched the internet for a vacation idea, and his experience wasn’t pleasing.

At that moment, he decided to work on a travel search engine that would find those backwater pages, insights, and opinions of what other travelers found.

Their original search engine would search what was already out on the web, find biased information, pull it back into a central database, and then license it as a B2B model to other travel providers.

Their first client came a year after its founding when Lycos, the number 3 web search engine in 2001, allowed TripAdvisor to power the travel sections on Lycos and provide all the travel-related content.

Before co-founding TripAdvisor, Kaufer was an independent software vendor and CenterLine Software’s co-founder and vice president of engineering, where he directed the creation of many award-winning programming environments.

The platform has over 1 billion reviews and recommendations from almost 8 million companies. This travel guide firm works across 43 markets and offers services in over 22 languages, making trip planning simple regardless of the sort of journey.

The global revenue of Tripdavisor, Inc. increased by approximately 49 percent in 2021 over the previous fiscal year after dropping sharply in 2020 due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Overall, the company’s revenue worldwide amounted to 902 million U.S. dollars in 2021, rising from 604 million U.S. dollars in 2020.

Kaori Becker, a Japanese-American woman from Bay Area, California, is the owner and founder of Kaori’s Kitchen.

Kaori runs this business with her mother, Yuki, and both are passionate about bringing forth Japanese culture & culinary experience to the forefront.

The founder studied to be an English teacher, but while in college, she started teaching her ramen skills which she acquired from her mother and grandmother, the owner of a ramen shop in Japan. Her love for Asian cuisine & her passion for teaching later inspired her to start her own business.

Kaori’s Kitchen started with Kaori and her mother giving mochi-making classes to the local people in the Bay Area. She later pivoted this business to sell mochi donuts in Columbus, Ohio, where she currently resides.

Before the pandemic, the founder used to offer physical classes for her mochi-making sessions. During the pandemic, she shifted the courses online, which resulted in a growth in the number of students.

She used the Verlocal platform to get the word out about her cooking classes, and in less than two months, her weekend classes were full.

Primarily, Kaori used to charge $35 per person for her mochi tutorial classes but later, word-of-mouth marketing, more than 200 positive reviews on Verlocal and her growing reputation allowed her to increase her rate to $75 per person.

Their classes are booked through Airbnb Experiences, Kari’s website, and Verlocal. Plus, they sell mochi donuts from their Ohio store and visit the local farmers market two to three times a month, where they sell around 350 donuts a day.

Currently, the company generates about $90,000 in revenue annually, of which $24,000 comes from Airbnb Experiences, making it a significant partner.

My name is Cameron and I am the name and co-founder behind Cameron’s Seafood. We catch, cook, chill, pack, and ship Maryland Crabs and crab cakes to your doorstep (to all 50 states) on a date you choose. Our food is made daily and shipped fresh, not frozen in less than 24 hours.

• I love taking old businesses and adding technology to help them reach their potential. My cousin and I run the home delivery business and plan to hit $20,000,000 by year 3.

My name is Ivan, I’m a founder of Marine Digital. We work in a niche of big vessel performance optimization. Our main goal is to make modern instruments of decarbonization available for the mass market.

During our 3 pilot projects we’ve earned about €60 K, and now we are launching the production of our digital twin in the EU.

Hi, I’m Jim Williams and I’m the founder and CEO of MustHaveMenus. This is my third successful Internet business.

The most unique thing about our story is how fast we’ve responded to help restaurants during the COVID crisis. Massive change hit the industry overnight. We responded by guiding restaurants towards the best practices and key products that could help them thrive even during the crisis. This includes an incredible industry shift to takeout and curbside pickup business and an overhaul of most kitchen-to-customer operations with a focus on safety. Our ability to meet the needs of restaurants during the crisis has greatly elevated our visibility in the industry and proven that our specialization for restaurants matters.

I am Chhavi, the founder and owner of the blog and YouTube channel Mrs Daaku Studio along with my husband Amit.

Our blog, YouTube channel, and products are designed to help you achieve what we have (...and, more).

Hi all! My name is Andrea and I’m the founder of Golden Root. I manufacture and sell a caffeine-free Turmeric Latte Mix in Denver, CO.

Currently, I sell Golden Root online from my e-commerce site and to over 50 coffee shops nationwide. After a very eventful and strong finish to 2018, Golden Root is making an average of $4k/mo.

BoardsbyMo is a charcuterie board prep business started by Monisha Misra. She began this as a side hustle but it quickly developed into a full-time job.

Monisha has always enjoyed hosting parties and creating culinary works of art, so she decided to build a business out of it.

She is currently expanding her B2B operations, teaching online classes multiple times per week, and hosting a number of business workshops each month.

Read the full article on sidehustlenation.com ➜

My name is Brett Lindenberg and I started the mobile food entrepreneurship blog FoodTruckEmpire.com out of my one-bedroom apartment in St. Paul, Minnesota back in 2014. The first ever podcast recorded for the blog was with a hot dog vendor I found on YouTube. Fast forward to 2019 and I’ve now done over 100 interviews with food entrepreneurs.

In 2018, the website averaged $5,400 monthly. The website now gets over 300,000 page views monthly, has an email subscriber list of over 35,000 and continues to grow. We’ve been quoted in Entrepreneur Magazine, CNBC, and other media outlets over the years.

BoardsbyMo is a charcuterie board prep business started by Monisha Misra. She began this as a side hustle but it quickly developed into a full-time job.

Monisha has always enjoyed hosting parties and creating culinary works of art, so she decided to build a business out of it.

She is currently expanding her B2B operations, teaching online classes multiple times per week, and hosting a number of business workshops each month.

Read the full article on sidehustlenation.com ➜

BoardsbyMo is a charcuterie board prep business started by Monisha Misra. She began this as a side hustle but it quickly developed into a full-time job.

Monisha has always enjoyed hosting parties and creating culinary works of art, so she decided to build a business out of it.

She is currently expanding her B2B operations, teaching online classes multiple times per week, and hosting a number of business workshops each month.

Read the full article on sidehustlenation.com ➜

Kaori Becker, a Japanese-American woman from Bay Area, California, is the owner and founder of Kaori’s Kitchen.

Kaori runs this business with her mother, Yuki, and both are passionate about bringing forth Japanese culture & culinary experience to the forefront.

The founder studied to be an English teacher, but while in college, she started teaching her ramen skills which she acquired from her mother and grandmother, the owner of a ramen shop in Japan. Her love for Asian cuisine & her passion for teaching later inspired her to start her own business.

Kaori’s Kitchen started with Kaori and her mother giving mochi-making classes to the local people in the Bay Area. She later pivoted this business to sell mochi donuts in Columbus, Ohio, where she currently resides.

Before the pandemic, the founder used to offer physical classes for her mochi-making sessions. During the pandemic, she shifted the courses online, which resulted in a growth in the number of students.

She used the Verlocal platform to get the word out about her cooking classes, and in less than two months, her weekend classes were full.

Primarily, Kaori used to charge $35 per person for her mochi tutorial classes but later, word-of-mouth marketing, more than 200 positive reviews on Verlocal and her growing reputation allowed her to increase her rate to $75 per person.

Their classes are booked through Airbnb Experiences, Kari’s website, and Verlocal. Plus, they sell mochi donuts from their Ohio store and visit the local farmers market two to three times a month, where they sell around 350 donuts a day.

Currently, the company generates about $90,000 in revenue annually, of which $24,000 comes from Airbnb Experiences, making it a significant partner.

Hello, I am Akshay Patel from Albuquerque, NM the land of enchantment. I started an event rental and decor company that led me to an event venue. The View Event Center is a lavish space that is an indoor and outdoor event venue with panoramic city views. Our high-end venue with experienced staff will assist from venue decor to the smallest details entailed in making memories of a lifetime. Simply Decor, Tents, and Events ensures exclusive decor and thrives to bring your event to life through customized, elegant decor for all of their clients.

The full-service company will individually work with every client to design their event that will intrigue every eye in the room. Our company is broad that we get many different types of customers and we make many great connections with them as well. The company was making upwards of $380,000 a year.

I'm Vaibhav Kishnani, an engineer but a passionate writer by profession. I established Content-Whale in 2017 when I was in my third year of engineering. Going by the maxim that quality writing is everything, Content-Whale caters to 42 different content types that form the backstory of every company’s digital presence and marketing efforts.

I started this content agency with a mere sum of Rs. 2,500. Today, we have drawn a revenue turnover of Rs. 4 Crores! In my opinion, it is not individual progress. Instead, a start-up is about connecting with the right individuals at the right time, who keep the show running ahead with their strife for perfection.

• Gail Becker established Caulipower after she realized there were no viable choices for pre-made cauliflower crust pizza.

• Gail, the creator, and CEO of Caulipower abandoned her prominent corporate career in May 2016 to launch a frozen food company focusing on gluten-free crusts. She is now worth $245 million at the age of 57.

• She went all in, bootstrapped her startup, and unlike other businesses, engaged advisors to teach her about the food sector. Becker had many criticizing friends and coworkers, but she never gave up.

• Her professional background includes journalism, government work, and marketing. She has worked at Edelman, Warner Bros., and the US Department of Health and Human Services.

• Caulipower amassed extra funding to accommodate greater ingredient purchases and higher-scale manufacturing runs, despite having $5 million in revenue in its first year.

• This Los Angeles-based company generated an estimated $100 million in revenue. The company's goods are available in 25,000 retailers, including Target and Kroger, and it controls more than half of the still-small cauliflower pizza crust segment in U.S. grocery stores.

Here are some top secrets to Gail's successful entrepreneurship journey:

• Do not be afraid to admit what you do not know.
• Hire smart people around you to help.
• Figure which rules to break and which ones to follow
• Do things differently and challenge other people's advice.

Hi, I’m Andrei Calinescu and I am the Founder and CEO of One Life Meals.

BoardsbyMo is a charcuterie board prep business started by Monisha Misra. She began this as a side hustle but it quickly developed into a full-time job.

Monisha has always enjoyed hosting parties and creating culinary works of art, so she decided to build a business out of it.

She is currently expanding her B2B operations, teaching online classes multiple times per week, and hosting a number of business workshops each month.

Read the full article on sidehustlenation.com ➜