Planning ahead is perhaps one of the most important jobs a caterer has. It requires expert organisation and excellent communication skills in order to make sure that your events will run smoothly. Cooking good food and providing high quality products is an important aspect of the job, but if you can’t organise for them to reach guests at the right time and looking and tasting as good as possible, all of your efforts will have been in vain.

Communication is essential in working out what it is that your guests want in the first place, but also in making sure that you know what to expect from the venue and what equipment is going to be available to you. Forming a good relationship with the people you’re going to be working with will make your life far easier, and they might be able to help you sort out any of the problems which you come up against.

Organisation is of the utmost importance, and you’ll need to ensure that everything has been planned meticulously from the very start. Before you can even decide what food you’re going to provide, you’ll need to know how it’s going to reach its destination, whether you’ll be able to store it there, how you’re going to keep it hot or cold etc. Writing a detailed list and transforming this into a full logistics plan is a sensible starting point, and it will make sure that you’re not going to have forgotten anything.