Buying a catering company in South Florida

• Repeat corporate clients and a place on venues' preferred caterer lists, so the calendar doesn't depend on advertising.
• Some contract business, like a cafeteria or a daily meal program, to carry the slow months.
• Future events already signed, spread across many clients.
• A chef and a salesperson who know the clients and plan to stay.
• Every menu costed out, so quotes cover food, labor and rentals with room to spare.
• A licensed kitchen with a lease you can keep, enough space to grow, and refrigerated vans in good shape.
• Referrals from planners and venues, not just one-time customers.

• Deposits. This is money the seller collected for events you'll cater. Make sure they're credited to you at closing, and read the contracts' cancellation terms.
• Where the work comes from. How much revenue depends on a few clients or one venue's preferred list, and whether those ties will survive a new owner.
• Contract terms. For contract food service, check how long each contract runs, how it renews, whether the client can cancel, and whether it can pass to you.
• How event staff are paid. Servers and bartenders are sometimes paid as independent contractors. Ask your accountant whether that would hold up, since getting it wrong can mean back taxes and penalties.
• The kitchen. The lease or shared-kitchen agreement, how old the equipment and vans are, and the inspection history on DBPR's site.
• Margins by job type. A drop-off lunch and a full-service wedding make money very differently; ask for results by type.
• Storm risk. What happens to events canceled during hurricane season, and who keeps the deposit.

• Which clients and venues send you the most work, and would they keep calling under a new owner?
• What's already booked for the coming year, and how much have you collected in deposits?
• How do you price a wedding compared with a corporate lunch?
• Who does the selling today, and who does the cooking?
• How do you staff a big weekend, and how do you pay the servers?
• Do you own, lease or share your kitchen, and what are the terms?
• What happens when a hurricane threatens an event weekend?

South Florida covers Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties: Miami, Hialeah, Doral, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Pompano Beach, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Jupiter, and the Florida Keys down to Key West. It's the state's largest metro area and its most international. PortMiami, Port Everglades and Miami International Airport tie the region to Latin America and the Caribbean, which supports a deep base of wholesalers, freight forwarders and logistics firms, many of them near the airport. Tourism and cruises, finance and wealth management, health care, real estate and construction carry much of the rest. Palm Beach County adds wealthy seasonal residents and, out west near Lake Okeechobee, sugarcane and vegetable farms. In the Keys, nearly everything turns on visitors, fishing and boating.

Companies that serve homes, condo buildings and other businesses do well here: the building trades, property services, insurance agencies, medical and dental practices, and professional firms.

Costs run high: commercial rent, wages and, above all, property and windstorm insurance. Price the insurance before you make an offer, not after. Miami-Dade and Broward make up the Florida Building Code's High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, with stricter rules for roofs, windows and structures. That raises building costs, and it also gives steady work to the contractors who know those rules well.

Much of the workforce and many customers speak Spanish as well as English, and a company that works well in both languages has an edge. The winter season matters more in Palm Beach County and the Keys than in Miami. In the Keys, the cost of housing makes hiring and keeping staff one of the hardest parts of running a company. Ask any seller there how they find workers and where those workers live.