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welcome back today we are discussing how to start a cake business from home so we're gonna cover a few different topics today including.

what permits or regulations need to make sure that you are safe to sell cakes out of your home 

sourcing your ingredients and also setting your price with your clients to make sure that you're charging a fair price but you're also taking into account all the time and effort that you're putting into your cakes of course how to keep a steady business and how to keep loyal clients also the equipment that you'll need to be able to start your cake business will also discuss training and learn new techniques and how you tackle that when your new Baker or your a development Baker and last but not least we'll discuss time management which is super important because baking is so labor-intensive you really need to make sure that you're approaching at the right waist but you don't lose your mind in the process.

 So The First step of how to start a cake business from home start off with Rules and regulations of starting your own business so rules and regulation scan vary drastically depending on a country you live in what state you live in some areas are more relaxed and some are super strict I live here in New York and the standards here are extremely strict so it's a lot harder to get started.

 In a state like this however it's important that you look online at the different regulations wherever you live to make sure that you're abiding by them and you're doing your best to make sure that like here in New York you have to have a food handler's permit which is really important and there's a couple of that in a lot of different areas and it just helps make sure that you really understand how food needs to be handled what temperature foods should be stored at and things like that so here if you wanted to sell baked goods out of your home you would need to have a separate kitchen that's used exclusively for your business and need to be certified by the State Board so it's extremely start area you also can't sell at a farmers markets or any thing like that.

Without a certificate so obviously there are rules in place because it's really important that you know you're meeting certain health codes and that everything that you're serving is up to a certain standard here in New York it's extremely difficult to get your kitchen certified and the honest truth that no one really ever wants to say is that a lot of small businesses do start out in their home and the kitchen isn't certified so when you're just starting out and you're selling to your friends and family or people you know a lot of times people do sell out of just their main kitchen however as your business kind of develops and you start selling to people you don't know or you start really having an increased volume it is important that you look into renting out a commercial space or having some kind of space that you can use it's exclusively for baking you kind of have to assess that as your business grows and kind of figure out what's right for you so when I started baking.

 I was just making cakes for my friends at my office and for my co-workers and I'ven ever really intended for it to be a business so I made everything out of my apartment and that's where I started my baking journey so along the way I've kind of transition into content creation so I no longer sell my cakes so I do everything in my apartment another thing is that if you really do want your baking company to be a business you need to get a business license so here in New York you get a business license based on what borough you live in so I got a business license from Manhattan and you just go to your local courthouse and they issue it to you I'm just not too expensive I think mine was about a 100$ or something like that but this definitely varies from place to place but if you do want to be official that is another you need to take so once you've done a bit of research into the regulations of where every live.

 The next Step of how to start a cake business from home is pricing and sourcing of your ingredients so when I'm talking about pricing I mean pricing up cakes that you're selling to your customers so this is something that I get asked so frequently there is a right or wrong answer for this but in general you should be pricing it as because of your ingredients plus the number of hours that you expect to spend on the cake times your hourly rate or what you value your time.

 So when I first started I thought that I was competing against the price of Supermarket cakes and I said oh you know cake is $30 I'm making this medium-sized cake my price should be $30 as well you don't have to keep in mind that a supermarket cake isn't custom made it's run in the middle and it's not the same thing as what you're offering so I guess kind of depends on what your business structure is but I always took customized orders so I can make a variety flavors sizes decorations and when someone asked me for that that comes in premium it is worth pricing your cakes more than a supermarket cake because that is not your competition you are offering a different product.

 I wish I had known that earlier but it is also hard because when you're new to baking you're not confident always in your skills and you don't always see through your time inside volleyball because for me I used to look at it kind of as like a practice cake it was developing my skills and that is hard so when your new bakery you know maybe you don't charge as much for your time because you'res till learning or you might not be very efficient and it might take you a longtime to do certain techniques I mean you kind of need to consider that as you price out of cake so I think the pricing cake also comes down to your demand and your clientele are.

 So here in New York people are willing to pay a pretty penny for customized cake and especially if you are willing to deliver it so I tried to separate delivery fee as well however if you don't get very many orders might be more difficult to to charge a higher price because you might look like you need that order or you don't want  something to go to someone else because you're too expensive and that is hard and at the end of the day it really just comes down to what you value your time at because you don't want to spend hours and hours making a cake that you're not getting paid for I mean if you are really trying to just focus on improving your technique maybe that's an investment that you're willing to make but in general you should be pricing out that time.

 So don't undervalue yourself and make sure that you really a recharging what you're worth so on the other side of pricing is sourcing all of your ingredients and trying to get the best deal right because you want to have the biggest margin that you can so for me I love here in Manhattan and this is literally my entire kitchen it looks bigger than it seems I promise so I can't have huge bags of flour bought it Costco or Sam's Club I was left to and that's definitely the best place to get a great deal and the best way to find savings but since I can do that I really try to focus on what stores have the best deals so for me I really like to be on my flour and sugar at my local grocery store where it's cheapest but I actually found that butter and vanilla are the best deal at Whole Foods.

So I think it's kind of getting to know your different stores around you and finding out what brands you like working with and where you can get the best it is hard because you know you always hear basically the finest ingredients that will make the best baked goods but it kind of is a delicate balance between how much you want to spend on your ingredients like you don't want to spend like twenty-five dollars on rare aged vanilla when you're trying to make a $50 key so you do have to take that into consideration when you're buying your ingredients another thing to keep in mind is if you need something like a unique extract or edible gold or something along those lines I really recommend trying to find it online I or almost all of those types of things on Amazon and it comes quickly it's reliable you can read reviews to make sure that you're getting a good quality product and it almost always is cheap and you can find it at a cake store or a craft store so that's another great way to find savings.

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 So once you figure those things the next step of how to start a cake business from home to create a steady and loyal client base.

There's a few different ways you can go about doing this number one that I think the most important thing is to have really great thanks goods or cakes when I used to accept cake orders I would get tons of returning customers or people that would say I was at a party and I tried one of the cakes I loved it can i order one so word of mouth is really great and making good quality baked goods is a great way to get your name out there every time you send out a cake into the world to a party or an event tons of different people are trying that and if they like your cake and they have a party coming up there and who made that cake let me get their business card I'd love to order from them so we think about that every cake you send out could be targeting all kinds of new people new business so having a really great product is a great way to build your business.

 Other than that if you are just starting out and you aren't getting tons of orders it's really great to leverage your friends and family and I know that sounds so simple and so basic but it's a really great way to start because again the markets you get on the world the more people are trying your case and the more people are becoming aware of what you have to offer of course social media is also a great way to get the word out about your business but it's not that easy to grow on social media especially in this day and age you know it's hard to get traction so I'm actually going to do a part two of this article which is going to be how to grow your cake business on social media it's a whole different animal and I'll go into all the details of that so stay tuned but for right now we're just working on building their base business.

The next step of how to start a cake business from home the equipment so when you're first starting out it can be kind of a big investment and a big undertaking trying to buy everything that you think you need there are so many tools in making and a lot of things are easier if you have the right tools but at the same time when you're just starting out you might not have a ton of capital or you know money sitting around to invest so when I first started I got the cheapest everything and you know I didn't I have just started baking I didn't have a ton of orders and I didn't know how serious all this was going to be so I just wanted to get you know some functional tools that works that I could get the job done with and you know I didn't want to spend a ton of money and that's totally fine you don't have to get the nice as to everything when you're first starting out this is my first cake stand you can hear it kind of like makes noise as it spins and it's not super smooth but I think thirty dollars and it worked great so a couple years and I decided I wanted to up grade and I've been making money from all the cakes I've been selling so I invested in this at Ateco 6:12.

 I haven ever looked back it's fantastic so my guidance to you is if you're just starting you don't know how serious your cake business is going to be just get the basics you don't need super fancy things however if you want to do this full-time you see yourself making a ton of cakes it's worth investing in the good quality equipment from the beginning if you're able to another great example of that is myKitchen Aid. 

 When I first started baking I had a regular hand mixer that I think wast wenty dollars that I got at Kmart and it works just fine it got the job done I wasn't making tons of cakes and it was great and then after my cake business became a little more serious I finally treated myself to a Kitchen Aid which was such a good investment I use it all the time it's super reliable there's nothing wrong with starting off with a hand mixer.

Once you have all the tools you need the next step of how to start a cake business from home to tackle all the different techniques that people may ask you to make when they place orders so this can be difficult and I think that it's really a challenge when you're first starting baking because when you take an order you know you want to push your your limits and your boundaries and you want to push yourself to become better but you also need to keep in mind your abilities and you don't want to take on something that you can't accomplish so it's a really delicate line that you'll have to work with and I think you'll definitely learn as you go if you do take on that project that's too big or too challenging.

 For me I really I didn't get too many crazy cake orders but I would get some emails that would ask for a four tiered cakes and I don't have a car so when I deliver a cake I gotta deliver on foot or take a taxi there's no I had to do a four-tiered cake so when I didn't order like that I would just say I'm sorry I can't do wedding cakes or I can't make a cake that's that large not only was delivery a problem but also my kitchen like I couldn't store for tears in my fridge at the time my freighter is much smaller so it's important to keep in mind what you're able to do and what you're capable of when you are accepting orders but that doesn't mean that you should say no to anything that's new or scary because you're gonna learn by doing at least that's how I did so I have no formal training I kind of learned as I went and I watched a ton of YouTube tutorials to learn how to do different techniques so I really do believe that you can be self-taught and learn along the way however if you are really serious about cake decorating and you want to learn all the basics right upfront you can totally enroll in a basic cake decorating class of what they're offered all over the place and they also have master classes online that you can pay for and wash so there's a lot of different avenues you can go in terms of learning new techniques and also in terms of practicing.

 The last step that I wanted to touch on how to start a cake business from home was time management whether you're in school and you're trying to start baking you work full time and are trying to make both side here's what I do or if you're going to do this full-time but you plan on taking a ton of cake orders time management is so important and I found that it's really great to try to plan ahead as far as you can so you can make you know cake layers in advance or you can make a double batch of your cake recipe or you can make frosting in advance and freeze it a week before you can know you have a really busy week ahead of you or you have a ton of cakes coming up it's so helpful.

 I think that planning and really trying to I like to make lists of what I need to do every day which is so type-a I know but it really helps me visualize what I need to get done and make sure that I'm managing my time correctly so that way I can have extent on time time management is also really important for keeping your sanity which sounds silly but you know a lot of us take on so much that we don't have tons of extra time so if you can't find efficiencies in any way in baking especially when you're making everything from scratch it's really important because you still need to you know see your friends or see your loved ones or spend time with your kids you can't have baking be your whole life you know you have to have other things as well and I definitely have had trouble with that so I had to the point where I was working you know in public accounting I was working 50 hours or 60 hours a week and I was making a cakes week Pro scratch and just even you know emailing back and forth of clients determining you know cake details delivering cakes or arranging pickups and of course making the cakes I just wasn't sleeping and I wasn't seeing any of my friends I was miserable and I really had to take a step back and kind of reassess my life so it's really important that you make sure that while you may love baking and it's great when you're making money from it and you've tons of orders you also need to always work to keep some semblance of work-life balance that.

Is my biggest tip to anyone who's trying to start a cake business because it can be all-consuming and especially when so many of us are kind of like type a perfectionist you spend hours on a cake you know just to get just sew or just write and make sure that you don't burn out so that is all the advice that I have for you guys today about how to start a cake business from home  if I didn't cover any questions you guys have feel free leave them in the comment section below I try to answer as many as I can and also stay tuned for the part two of this series which is going to discuss how to grow your cake business on social media so thanks so much for joining me today you guys hopefully I'll see you guys again soon for my next article see you later.

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