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If you love baking, starting your own baking business from home may have crossed your mind. However, it’s not as easy as simply baking a few cakes and then posting them on Facebook. You need to make sure you’re taking the right steps to protect your business and ensure longevity.
Below, you’ll find everything you need to know about starting your own home-baked business:
Food Service Background
Let’s assume you already know how to bake and you’ve received a lot of compliments on your creations. The next thing you need to do is ensure you have sufficient knowledge of safe and hygienic food preparation. You’ll also need to take into account allergies. It’ll be your responsibility to let people know if you’ve had nuts in your kitchen, for example. A retail or food service background would be helpful but isn’t essential – it’ll simply give you an idea of how to deal with customers and what to expect as you go about running your business.
What You Need to Include
Other things you’ll need include:
- A place to store your ingredients, a regular shopping regime, and good suppliers.
- Somewhere to store your equipment away from your personal equipment.
- Licenses and inspections required by your state/location.
- An understanding of your competition – who else is doing this in your area and how can you differentiate?
If you love baking, starting your own baking business from home may have crossed your mind. However, it’s not as easy as simply baking a few cakes and then posting them on Facebook.
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Starting Your Business
If you think you’re in a good position to start making a profit from your creations, you’ll need to:
- Find out the laws and regulations in your state regarding food service business. You may need a food handlers permit, for instance. You may be able to file for the licenses and things you need online.
- Find out if you need to collect sales tax on your food items by contacting your state’s tax office.
- Find out if you need to collect food tax.
- Create the business entity that best protects your assets from a lawsuit should somebody raise an issue with your products.
- Figure out what goods to focus on. It’ll probably be good to keep your menu smaller at first so you can master the basics of business and create mouthwatering treats at the same time. You can then learn what’s profitable and potentially expand your menu when you feel ready.
“Every entrepreneur has to have a passion for what they do, but to be successful they also need to have a product or service to sell which is unique and that answers a real consumer or business to business problem.” – 3 Things You’ll Need To Set Up Your Own Business
- Consider how you’ll make your goods stand out – will you make them vegan? Gluten-free?
- Create your business plan. This may not seem necessary for a home-based business but it’s so important for any business to outline where they want to be and how they plan on getting there.
- Order your packaging and labels.
- Create a marketing and social media plan so you can effectively reach your target audience. You could sell them via social media and offer local delivery, or you could supply your goods to local restaurants and cafes. You could even do both.
- Consider starting a YouTube channel or food blog to grow your platform and create a following!
Starting a business like this can be scary, but it might be the best thing you ever do. How will you start your own home-baked business?
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