As a hard and fast rule you do not need any particular qualifications to become a caterer. A real interest in food and the presentation of it is a must whether qualified or not. Usually experience will teach you a lot when working in the food service industry but qualifications always help so if you are thinking of starting a catering business do look into enrolling on a course. Aside from a love of food and presentation skills a caterer will need to have some business acumen. A catering company is a business like any other after all and will need to comply with tax laws and this will require the correct knowledge. All work undertaken by the catering company will have to be paid for by the client and for this invoices will have to be raised. In the early days of any business taking on staff to support to you will be limited due to a lack of funds. Therefore, if you want to start a catering business you should know the basics of business including how to invoice clients, file VAT returns and keep your books up to date. If you really cannot bear the paper work side of business then you can always out source this work or bring help into your office. Remember this will cost and in any start up business keeping costs down is important.
Qualifications can be obtained in catering from organizations such as City and Guilds. The term catering is so broad that the courses available from City and Guilds range from barista skills and bar skills to professional cookery courses. If you wanted to open a food service company a course from City and Guilds could be a good place to start. You could pick and choose from the available courses to gain the appropriate knowledge to open the exact company you want. Any course from any culinary school would help to get you’re cooking and recipe ideas up to a professional standard. There are also a lot of adult education centers that provide cooking courses on the weekend and on evenings. Ideally anybody who wants to open a catering company would have already worked for a catering business at some point. Experience is the best thing to get any person though opening their own business.