starting small on long island

I know with us we can do temp permits for 1 day events I think 6-8 times a year. That's what we are doing and the HD guy doesn't really stress us that hard. Same thing as you, EZ UPs and personal gear. 3 wash bin and a separate cooler hand washing station.

Your best plan of action is to talk to the HD first. Tell them what you would like to do and they can spell out the options available in your State (some municipalities have their own regs as well). If you begin your due diligence with the HD you should save yourself a lot of headache down the road. As Dadeo stated, asking the HD about Temp Permits would be a good place to start.

PS can we see a pic of the FRIGIDAIR smoker. Sounds really cool.

Gonna be hard to convince the Health department to let you run anything consistently without a real kitchen. Look into commisarys or business incubators. At the very least, you'll need running hot water, a place to go to the bathroom, 3 bay sink with capacity to hold the grey water, the list goes on. Cooking for fun is one thing, doing it as a business is totally different. I just opened a BBQ restaurant in wading river. Small location, low rent, lots of exposure. People get in too deep with places too big, rent too high, and too much debt.

That could not be farther from the truth. That is only one of the requirements and there are physical requirements just as Early Morning Smoke described. I think a call to the local Health Department is in order to get the facts. If God forbid someone got sick, and you were not compliant you would be at big time risk for a lawsuit. That is why we never allow the public to sample our Que at competitions.

hwy hawk said:

well I am aware that I'll have to have Insurance and be Incorporated but not sure what to call it. the HD is funny like that. All it takes is the wrong classification to screw things up. It's not going to be full blown catering just small backyard party's with most the prep work done on site. would it be mobile vending or something like that?

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Your best bet is to speak to your local inspector and tell them what your business plan is. They will look at your proposed operations and then they can then tell you what your requirements will be to meet the regs. They will be able to tell you how your plan fits into their food service definitions.

Starting out by consulting the inspector can prevent many headaches and extra/wasted costs.

if you're going to be mobile vending, you'll need to prove to the department of health that you actually own a mobile vending vehicle, and have that vehicle inspected by the DOH and certified. That vehicle will have to include cold and hot food storage( thermometers in all), 3 bay sink(unsure is nassau requires open drains in mobile vehicles) a separate hand wash sink in both the cooking and serving areas(if separate) water holding tanks, clean water, grey water at 125% capacity of clean water. As far as suffolk county goes, pretty sure the smoker has to be covered if you're cooking outside, and a hand wash sink within xxx amount of distance from the smoker.

I try to be a contributor on here, and I always try to be as honest as I can, sometimes brutally honest. And i will admit, these threads infuriate me. It always goes a little something like this " I love bbq'ing, everyone loves my food, so I wanna start catering" Ok, fine, well and good. Here's my problem, these backyard bandits take away business from REAL places. 9 times out of 10, illegally. Unless you're going to go 50-100k into a food truck, or concession trailer, the health department isn't going to just let you do mobile catering. Your other option is to rent kitchen space from a restaurant(outside of their business hours), or go to a commissary(church, any place with a CERTIFIED, INSPECTED commercial kitchen) rent space from them, and do your prep and a majority of your cooking there. But transportation is still an issue.

HWY hawk, i'm not trying to sound like a dick. But why are you just going to go cook onsite, and do small parties? First off, PLEASE GO TO YOUR HEALTH DEPARTMENT, talk with an inspector and tell them what you currently have, and your plan. You're most likely going to walk out a VERY unsatisfied person with their response.

If I understand this correctly, you're going to go boil noodles for pasta salad, boil potatoes for potato salad, mix dressings, dress salads. You CANNOT cook this stuff at your own house, and bring it to people to serve them. IT IS ILLEGAL. Onsite refrigeration? how are you keeping things cool? How will you get pounds of food from boiling hot, to a food safe chilled temperature within a 4 hour window? There could be nothing more annoying to myself, or my customers to go sit at their house, for 12 hours as I smoke pork shoulders. The mess involved with large scale bbq is unreal.

rant over, good luck, do your due diligence. If you really like doing it, look into actually doing it, instead of trying to half arse it.

hwy hawk said:

Just trying to get some suggestions on how to start up. O.K. I know I'll have to call the HD and not trying to be a BACKYARD BANDIT and take any money out of the mouth of any of you REAL BBQers. I cook for 80 guys every month at my firehouse and still work full time, just going to be a weekend thing till I retire in a couple of years then hope to go full time .That's all. Thanks.

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You are in the same position that we were when we first contemplated getting into the business of BBQ. What we (the Brethren) are saying is, if you are serious about doing this full time later on, then approach it as starting a business and not as a "paying hobby". The days of "paying hobbies" are over. With all of the Federal, State and Municipal regulations in place nowadays it is almost impossible to do this as a "sideline" and not spend a fortune with little to no profit.

To do what you propose, legally and with protection for your personal assets from liability, you will still need to ensure you are compliant with ALL business laws/regs. The cost of doing so, for weekend cooking/serving, is the same as if you go full time. The only difference is that you profits will be much less, if any, until you go full time due to the lower volume of sales you can generate.

Here are the steps we took when we started out (part time/weekends), in order of importance.

1) Work up a complete business plan. A comprehensive business plan gives you direction and something to use as a road map to your goals. Without this first step you will more than likely find yourself losing money due to avoidable mistakes that were not thought through in advance. If you need to consult a professional for this expect a cost of between $500 to $1500 for assistance/creation.

2) Shared a copy of our complete/comprehensive business plan to our HD Inspector. He then told us what licenses, permits, etc were required to be compliant with the food handling/sales regs. He also informed us of what types of equipment and processes/procedures we would need in order to be compliant. The cost for this is dependent on your area. A good approximation would be in the range of $500 to $1500.

2) Consulted an Attorney and Accountant for advice concerning the best form of business entity to operate under for reasons of tax liability and personal asset protection. (For our purposes a well constructed LLC was our choice. It allows for the same personal asset protection as a C Corp but allows the business profits to flow to our personal income reporting which avoids the higher C Corp tax rates) The cost for this could range from $1000 and up depending on how much work the attorney/accountant needs to complete what you choose.

3) Consulted insurance companies to secure all of the insurance required to protect our personal assets. (vehicle, equipment, liability, etc) Approximation of insurance costs; Liability- $300 to $800/yr for $1M coverage, Commercial Vehicle-$350 to $550/yr, Business (equipment,etc) if applicable $500-$800/yr.

4) Consulted governmental organizations to ensure we were complying with all laws/regs involving operation of a business. i.e. Federal (Business ID#-EIN, IRS Tax #,etc); State (Sales Tax #, Business License if applicable, etc), this can involve multiple jurisdictions if you plan to operati in multiple States; Municipal (Sales Tax # if applicable, Business License if applicable, etc) his can involve multiple jurisdictions if you plan to operati in multiple Municipalities. Costs for these are minimal, probably less than $300 total.

5) Researched other BBQ businesses to find out how they operated and what types of equipment they used. Worked for/with a vendor/caterer to gain experience. Doing BBQ as a business is a lot different than doing it as an unpaid/paid hobby.

6) Purchase necessary equipment. This item is dependent on the type of business you will operate. i.e. Vending, Catering, Brick and Mortar, etc. We stated vending at Festivals since in KS we could do 6 per year with needing a food license and we were deemed as operating under the festival events insurance and business licenses. We still need a State Tax # as sales tax was still required. KS allows for the tax to be calculated off of the total gross sales reported so we didn't have to "charge" sales tax on each purchase. We reported our gross sales, calculated the tax due and paid it out of the gross receipts. (you state may not allow this method). Equipment needs were somewhat minimal due to the rustic setups allowed at festivals compared to the reg requirements for permanent licensed food vendors. Equipment costs could range from $500 to $5000 depending on your operations.

We mostly broke even for the five years we were doing BBQ part time. However, it did pay for itself and then allowed us to go into full time with very little capital outlay since the five years prior had paid for most of our start up costs and capital requirements.

If you are prepared for this type of journey then you can be successful at it. Just don't go into it expecting to become rich. It is a journey of love for BBQ. :grin:

I hope this helps to answer some of your questions. I have tried to cover the basics and to provide an approximation of capital investment needed.