Ever since I moved here, we have been thinking about setting up our own food business. Jobs are hard to find here and I wanted to do something I enjoy. Pete also wants to be his own boss so we thought that we could start our very own company.
I have always wanted to run a café of my own. I really love baking, most of all, and I thought it would be cool to sell my baked goods such as brownies, scones, frosted cakes and cheesecakes. And I thought it would be even better to offer snacks such as curry puffs, grilled sandwiches and mini pies. The cafes here are quite boring since they basically sell the same things. But it was hard to find a suitable location that is not too run down nor too expensive. Also, the laws regarding food are quite strict and I would not be able to cook in most café kitchens.
Besides looking for the right location, we had to overcome many obstacles along the way. I wouldn't go into everything but suffice to say we have had many rejections and refusals. But luckily for Pete, he managed to get enrolled in a Start Your Own Business course run by the city, unemployment office and funded by EU. He got to attend classes, practicals and even got to consult the teachers for advice and help. That helped us a lot since we could make appointments with them and have a chat about our business.
In the end, we settled on a small catering business that focuses on delivering lunch to companies and also have a small menu for take aways since there are many business around our location. We aim to start operating by September so we are in a hurry to get things done. We are currently working on our website. We are newbies when it comes to building our own website so it has been quite frustrating when the programme is not as easy to use as we thought it would be.
Well, actually Pete's the frustrated one. He is in charge of setting up the website. Since we are trying to keep our expenses low, we have to do lots of things ourselves. I am in charge of cooking and photographing the food. All I have is a simple camera that I have used for my blog photos. That and some new white plates to put the food on.
That was my project for today. Who knew taking photos of food would take hours. After cooking - it's fried chicken, roasted chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy today - I had to plate the food and then find a nice angle to make it look good. I didn't want the pictures to look cheap or tacky. I want them to look nice and sleek. I don't really know the best angle and such so I took many pictures from many angles. Every time I replace the food, I had to wash the plate so that there won't be any smudges. I don't know how many times I had to wash and wipe my hands.
Oh, and to save money, I used my only white bedsheet as the background. I placed it by the kitchen window since I have no proper lighting. I was lucky that the sun cooperated with me most of the time. When it got a bit dark, I had to wait until the clouds moved away from the sun and continued taking the shots. Hopefully the next few days would be as bright as today so that the pictures would turn out nice and clear.
Here are some of the pictures that I am quite satisfied with. Take a look and tell me what you think. Comments are welcome!
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