Caterer

Northern Beaches resident Sarah-Jane Hallett graduated from TAFE in 2005 and is already running her own catering business.

The 31-year-old, who was nominated for NSW Training Awards Vocational Student of the Year in 2006, has named the business Nude Food to reflect her additive-free, allergy-friendly cooking policy.

Hallett, a qualified chef, makes everything from school lunches and take-home family dinners to food for cocktail parties and functions.

The Nude Food menu contains a range of sweet and savoury meals and snacks, including dairy-free banana bread made with maple syrup instead of sugar as well as frittata, lasagne and muffins.

Hallett wanted to cater for people with food allergies after discovering how many there were.

"I saw there was a market for it having worked in places that supplied [vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free and other] food along those lines,'' she says.

"It's a very different style of cooking compared to regular food that anyone can eat - it gives people with allergies more variety if they want to eat out.

"I thought, what if you made meals for people that they could have at home, rather than being very limited because they can't eat certain things and everything today has lots of additives?"

Hallett started the business from home while working at a Manly cafe and was approached by a private school in Mosman to supply homemade, cooked lunches for its students.

 Then their parents began putting in orders for take-home dinners and the word soon spread to other families that weren't part of the school.

"People email or call their orders in and I'll either deliver them to their house or they'll pick it up," Hallett says.

She says up to 75 per cent of the 200-300 children at the school order their lunches, so her mornings are spent cooking those.

In the afternoon, when the children are in class, she makes healthy snacks such as muffins - as well the family dinners, which can number from five to 20. Then it's off home for the function catering.

"It's really full-on. But a lot of it is preparation - if I make lasagne [at school], I'll make big trays and freeze them, then cut out what I need some days rather than cooking every single day for every single meal. I make as much hot food as I can because they can't have chips or chocolate,'' she said.

How did you get into your job?

When I saw how many people had food allergies I thought it would be good to help them. I did my Certificate III in Commercial Cookery at TAFE in 2005. I'd already had 10 years' experience cooking.

Upside? Creating tasty dishes and sampling them with family and friends.

Downside? It's a lot of hours and a lot of work in the early years.