• Decide what foods work best for your home catering company.serious woman image by Lisa Eastman from Fotolia.com
  
  A business selling home-cooked foods could be very profitable; everyone gets hungry. One way to make good use of this idea is with a home catering company. To start your company, first consider what would be easiest for you to make and what would appeal to your customers and decide what food your company will provide.
  
  

Delectable Desserts

• Sell pretty little petit fours.Selection of delightful handmade chocolates and fudges. image by Brett Mulcahy from Fotolia.com
  
  Tempt the sweet tooth with a wide range of dessert items. Make boxes and dessert trays of fancy pastries, canapés and petit fours. Fill orders for homemade candy such as toffee, divinity, fudge, peanut brittle, marzipan and pralines. Make delicious baked treats such as scones, dessert breads, muffins and cinnamon rolls. During holiday seasons, sell gift baskets of sugar cookies decorated with Pilgrims and turkeys for Thanksgiving, colorful ornaments for Christmas, jack-o-lanterns and ghosts for Halloween, and firecrackers and flags exploding for Fourth of July, and “I Love You” and pink and red hearts for Valentine’s Day. As an alternative, you might choose to specialize only in pies, cheesecakes, cupcakes and cakes.
  
  

Scrumptious Suppers

• Provide healthy meals for busy families.roast dinner image by hazel proudlove from Fotolia.com
  
  Consider a home catering company that provides whole meals. During hectic and busy workweeks, parents regularly don’t have the time or energy to prepare dinner for the kids. Fill this need by selling healthy, home-cooked, ready-to-eat dinners that dad or mom can stop by and get on the way home. Customers can even pick up meals for the upcoming week on the weekend. For variety, alter your available menus every two weeks or each month. For example, in April, you might offer stuffed pork loin, roasted potatoes, grilled leeks and brownie bars; pan-seared lamb, parmesan polenta, green beans and berry tarts; or Jamaican jerk marinated tofu, brown rice, black beans and vanilla pudding cups. In May, your menu could be entirely different. However, you may want to consider featuring a few favorites that you offer year-round.
  
  

Countries’ Cuisine

• Prepare food from a certain region, such as Italy.Typical italian food with pasta fish and tomato image by Alfonso d'Agostino from Fotolia.com
  
  Consider basing your home catering business around the foods and cooking style of a particular region or country. This is a good idea if you have recipes that have been handed down in your Dominican or French or New England family for generations, or if you simply want to specialize in Cuban, Korean or Italian food. A few examples of a menu based on Southern foods are fried chicken, pinto beans and rice, collard greens and banana pudding; barbecued ribs, potato salad, fried okra and sweet potato casserole; smothered pork chops, cornbread, macaroni and cheese, green beans and peach cobbler; and chicken and dumplings, mashed potatoes, squash casserole and red velvet cake.