Starting Your Own Bakery Business From Home

If you love baking and have ideas for selling your bakes, starting out today is no longer complicated. You can begin as a small business from your home kitchen. Plan your sales well, and you're already off to a good start.

If you want to sell baked goods, this article will help you prepare to become a bakery business owner, from planning before you open to a sales plan you can adapt to your needs.

Start Simple With a Homemade Bakery

A homemade bakery is a way to sell baked goods starting from your home kitchen, making your own recipes in your own oven. You can choose good ingredients and control the quality of your bakes yourself. Your customers then enjoy fresh, delicious, quality bakes, just like the ones you make for yourself at home.

Why Start a Homemade Bakery Today?

• If you love baking all kinds of treats, you can earn money doing what you're passionate about. Being happy in your work also sparks more ideas for growing your business.
• You get to use and showcase all kinds of ideas, which gives your bakery menu its own identity, whether through appealing looks or unique, delicious flavours.
• Your bakes are fresh because you control the quality of every piece at every stage, and you choose ingredients of the quality you want.
• Getting started is no longer difficult. In the past you might have needed a shopfront, rent, a kitchen fit-out and staff, but now you can start small from your home kitchen and use modern marketing to sell and earn an income.
• The business is flexible. You can choose when to bake and sell to suit you; you might not need to sell every day of the week, leaving you free time for other things.
• There is always a market for delicious bakes. If you're confident in your skills and keep improving, your small business can certainly grow in the future.

How to Prepare Before You Start Selling

If you have the skills and are ready to bake for sale but aren't sure how to start a business from your kitchen, here are some basic steps you can adapt to suit you.

1. Choose the type of bakery products to sell

First, choose the type of baked goods you'll sell. Base it mainly on what you love to make, so your shop has a clear highlight. If you can make many kinds of bakes, you can also sell a mix. For more ideas, here are six types of bakery products:

1. Bread: e.g. French bread, white bread, wholewheat bread, brioche, baguettes, pretzels and scones.
2. Cakes: e.g. sponge cake, butter cake and chiffon cake.
3. Puff pastry with savoury or sweet fillings: e.g. chicken pie, beef pie, red pork pie, pineapple pie and coconut pie.
4. Bakes with a crumbly, crisp dough: e.g. short dough, cookies, short-crust pies and tarts.
5. Bakes combining puff pastry and bread: e.g. Danish pastries and croissants.
6. Hollow bakes for filling: e.g. choux pastry and eclairs.

2. Get your baking equipment ready

If you're baking to sell, the one essential piece of equipment is an oven, since bakery products are, after all, baked goods. Whether you choose a small or large oven depends on your budget. The main baking equipment to prepare includes:

• Mixer
• Weighing scale
• Measuring spoons, cups and jugs
• Mixing bowls
• Hand whisk
• Rolling pin
• Flour sifter
• Baking paper
• Cooling rack
• Cake knife
• Oven gloves
• Pastry brush
• Moulds

Once you've chosen the type of bakery products to sell, you'll have a better idea of what extra equipment you need.

3. Plan your budget clearly

Funding is crucial to any business. When baking to sell, plan carefully where your money will come from. If it's your own savings, you may not need to worry about loan interest, but if you borrow, be careful with all your spending, because in the end your sales must pay back the investment.

To plan your budget, list every cost of running the business, including equipment, electricity, ingredients, advertising, packaging and delivery, so you know your exact costs. This will determine how you price each item you sell.

How much capital you need depends on how much you can bake and sell. If you want to sell large quantities, your costs may be higher, but so will your income.

Your choice of ingredients matters too: premium ingredients will also raise your costs. Plan all of this clearly from the start to maintain the quality and income you're aiming for.

4. Plan how to manage every part of the business

Good systems are essential when baking to sell. Even if you don't sell every day, you need solid systems so the business runs smoothly. These fall into:

• Kitchen management: this needs a lot of attention, because each day you must have enough ingredients for the quantity you plan to sell. Plan your ingredient quantities carefully: when to restock and how to store them so you have enough without wasting anything.
• Marketing: another driver of sales. Plan which bakes you'll sell each month, and if you have new fillings or seasonal twists, when and for how long you'll sell them, so you can prepare ingredients in time and practise until you've mastered each item before selling it.

5. Choose the right sales channels for your shop

A home bakery can sell through many channels:

• Customers buy from your home to take away: selling homemade bakes isn't about formal ordering and sitting down in a shop. Customers get a warmer experience, like visiting a friend's home, smelling bakes fresh from the oven and choosing their favourites to take home.
• Selling to shops for resale: if you can make large quantities and keep the quality consistent, shops and cafés will buy your bakes to resell, another channel that makes selling easier.
• Selling online and delivering to customers: a hugely popular channel today. You can sell through social media, take orders in rounds and bake and deliver to customers' addresses on scheduled dates. This also helps you bake just the right quantity for each round.

6. Design your packaging

Packaging helps customers remember you, and if someone receives your bakes as a gift and loves them, they'll know how to contact your shop.

Besides looking good, packaging should protect your bakes from damage in transit, so when customers open the box, the treats still look as appetising as if they'd just come out of the oven.