How to start a bakery business from your home – Your inner baker wants to spend all day making soft cookies and delicious cakes. You want to be your own boss and make all the decisions. But the realist in you knows you might not have the money or time to start your own bakery.
Then don’t worry. A home-based bakery could be a solution to this problem.
With this kind of small business, you can bake as much as you want, be your own boss, and work from home whenever you want. You don’t have to rent an expensive shop and hire a bunch of people to start a home bakery.
You’re in the right place if you want to know how to start a baking business from home. Here you will get a step-by-step guide to turning your home kitchen into a powerhouse for making delicious and tasty cakes or cockies.
So, let’s start our step-by-step guide on starting a home bakery business.
How To Start A Bakery Business From Your Home
Here, you will get a step-by-step guide on starting a bakery business from home without any hustle and huge investment.
As I have mentioned before, you don’t have to rent expensive shops to start your bakery business. You just need kitchen and cooking skills to start earning from your home-based bakery business.
So, without wasting any more time, let’s shift our focus to the complete guide on how to start a bakery business from your home.
Know Your Local Cottage Food Laws Of Your Area
A part of the law called “cottage food” covers most home bakers. This can help separate bakeries that are run out of people’s homes from business or retail bakeries that have their own storefronts or production kitchens. Commercial bakeries have to meet certain rules about tools and cleanliness, but many of these rules don’t apply to people who make food in their homes.
Cottage food is controlled by each state, but most of the time it has to be shelf-stable and doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Just right for baking!
Cottage bakeries usually have a cap on how much they can sell. This is to make sure that these home-based food businesses don’t get too big and avoid following the rules of a retail bakery. There are also rules about who can buy from you. Usually, you can only sell from a cottage bakery directly to customers, so you can’t sell to a neighborhood grocery store or bakery.
The first step is to determine the rules where you live. The health departments in your state and town should be able to tell you more about the cottage food rules in your area.
So the first step is to contact the health department in your area.
Get Your Kitchen Certified and Finish All The Paperwork
The second step on how to start a bakery business from your home is getting your kitchen certified for a bakery business and completing all the paperwork.
Find out what changes you need to make and do them before the first inspector comes to your house for the inspection. A tester will come to your kitchen every year to verify if you want to keep running this bakery.
Once you know you can start a home-based bakery, you’ll need to turn your home kitchen into a business kitchen. This will give you the chance to sell baked goods to people.
Before inspectors will sign off on your kitchen, you’ll likely have to make some changes.
Complete all the paperwork before start cooking in your home bakery so that you don’t have to face any legal issues in the future.
Prepare A Business Plan For Your Home Bakery
This is an important step in how to start a bakery business from your home. Describe your business in one line. What will you be selling? What’s different about your business?
For instance, instead of calling your business a “home-based bakery,” use words that better describe what you do.
You could say that you run a business out of your home that makes unique cookie care packages. Now your customers know what you’re baking and how you’re giving it to them.
Once you know what you will sell, you can start to think about other parts of your business. It takes time to write a business plan, but it will help you think about your goals and aims.
Think about things like:
- Who needs or wants the things you bake?
- How much are you going to charge?
- Where will you sell them, and how?
- What tools do I need to get started?
- What amount of funds do you need to get your business going?
- What is the minimum amount of money you want to make in the first year?
Get A Unique Name For Your Business
Only coming up with a catchy name for your business might be more fun than baking, and the more unique it is, the better it will be. If your bakery’s specialty is wedding cakes, you could call it Honeymoon Sweets.
People like business names that are creative, but make sure it’s clear what you’re selling.
After you choose a name, make sure it isn’t already taken by another shop. Make sure to register your business name and get a Federal Tax Identification Number if it is available.
Figure Out Your Target Audience
It’s time to start thinking about your customers. In your business plan, you should clearly understand who you want to sell to.
Want to sell your treats to people in your area? Or do you have shops, schools, or businesses in mind? The more you know about your ideal customer, the easier it will be to meet their requirements.
Home-baked goods will always be in demand, but there could be a lot of competition. Find the sweet spot to help your business stand out and bring in more people.
Set Up A Menu
Setting up a menu is the most important and challenging part of starting your home bakery business. Your menu should include all the items you make in your home bakery at pocket-friendly prices.
You need to keep your prices pocket-friendly because you are going to start a new bakery business, and you have to attract customers.
So keeping your items price pocket-friendly and providing them with tasty and delicious food items will help you grow your business.
You may also find our other blog, 10 Best Bakery Items for Dessert Lovers, interesting to get an idea of dessert for your home bakery business.
Market Your Business
The final step of how to start a bakery business from your home is marketing your business so that more and more people get to know about it.
You need to let your customers know you’re open for business, whether you’re selling fancy cookies or delicious cakes.
Here are some ideas for marketing your business:
Social media: Using social media is one of the easiest ways to gain customers. Make an account on Facebook. Set up an Instagram page that is engaging. Get started with Twitter tweets.
Post pictures of your treats and find different ways to communicate to your customers. Having a presence on social media is a great way to show off what you have to give and to get people’s attention.
Website: A website is one of the most important tools for your business. It’s where you can tell the story of your brand, post pictures of your treats, or blog about how to bake.
Your website shouldn’t be too hard to use, but it should have a menu (with contents listed), prices, and information about how to order things.
Your neighborhood: Getting involved in your local community is a great way to meet buyers and other small businesses. When you go to local events and places, people will be able to see and try your treats. This will get people talking about your shop.
Conclusion
This blog was all about starting a home bakery business from your home kitchen. I have provided a step-by-step guide on how to start a bakery business from your home.
To start a home bakery business, you must read and understand all these points:
- Know Your Local Cottage Food Laws Of Your Area
- Get Your Kitchen Certified and Finish All The Paperwork
- Prepare A Business Plan For Your Home Bakery
- Market Your Business
These are the 4 simple steps necessary for every person who wants to start a home bakery business.
I hope this blog has cleared all your queries on how to start a bakery business from your home. You can let us know through comments if you have any questions regarding it.
FAQs
Is it worth it to bake from home?
If you focus your bakery on custom work, like making cakes for big parties, you can make about $1,000 a month. If you only do a few custom jobs per week, you can expect to make, on average, $300 per month.
Which cooked goods are the best to sell from home?
Cupcakes, brownies, and cookies always do well at bake sales, but any small baked goods that are easy to carry are also good ideas. Note that cakes and pies are harder to package and sell by the piece than cookies, cupcakes, brownies, and muffins.
