Running a catering business from home, it turns out, is no walk in the park. I thought my operation was small enough to get away without having a commercial kitchen at my disposal, but I’m rapidly realising that I was wrong.
Half the problem is the fridge, which is perpetually filled with grazing table fodder, individual tiramisu pots, wild crafted botanical sodas and trifles in various states of setting. There’s not enough room for this stuff, let alone my own household supplies. It might seem like the simple solution would be to get another fridge, but it doesn’t make sense in my kitchen – it would destroy the flow, as the layout doesn’t really permit the inclusion of another appliance. I’d have to knock out half the countertop, and move that bench space somewhere else…
The more I think about it, the more I realise that the answer lies in the realm of renovations. This is a weird thought because, when it comes to my kitchen, interior design has never crossed my mind. I always thought that a functional kitchen was just about making do with the space that’s available to you. That might still hold true, but now doing that involves completely re-configuring the whole layout of the room.
I’m at a crossroads: either I move to a commercial kitchen and double my ongoing expenses in the process, or I renovate my kitchen and temporarily explode my bank account. Those, it seems, are my options if I want to keep this business going, which I do. I haven’t really thought it through at all, but I kind of already know what it’s going to be. I’ve got images of retractable pan racks and professional grade cooktops dancing in my head, and it’s hard to imagine not going ahead with these renovations now that they’ve appeared as a possibility.
Besides, my whole brand is built around the ‘home cooked’ nature of my offering. If I operated from an external premises, it’d hardly be home cooked, would it?