This story is part of our 1,000 stories campaign. What’s your story?
Your Name: Tania Shehzad
Business Name: The Kitchen at 225, a food catering and party planning service
Type of Business: Food & Beverage
Business Location: Jersey City, New Jersey, United States
Reason for starting
After spending countless hours planning my son’s first birthday party and walking out of it like I had missed the whole event because I was so busy organizing and setting up and making sure everything went as planned, I realized there was a serious need for a budget-friendly, creative catering and event planning business. It was the best way for me to combine my passion for food, cooking and working with people in a manner that allowed me to balance my work and personal life.
How do you define success?
I define success as achieving an end goal with a feeling of contentment, pride and joy. If what you do makes you happy and makes you feel like you made a difference in someone’s life in any way possible; for me that is success.
Biggest Success
I consider every successful event with a happy client at the end as my biggest success. It could be planning and catering an event of 50 people, or making a princess cupcake for a little girl whose eyes light up as you unveil your creation.
What is your top challenge and how have you addressed it?
In this business where everything is customized and made by hand, my biggest challenge remains pricing products competitively while making sure that my hours of hard labor gets rewarded as well. Having access to wholesale prices for high quality, organic produce and food items remains a challenge for a small business owner like myself.
Who is your most important role model?
My father and my husband are my biggest role models because they epitomize the same virtue of working hard with 100% honesty and integrity. They have both gone through major highs and lows in their personal and professional lives and recovered with high self esteem and a motivation to work harder.