While starting any home-based business may not be as easy as many people have thought, if well planned, it can make you huge profits and could just be what you’ve been waiting for to exit the rat race. If you like baking and everyone likes raving over your baked goods, starting your own home based bakery could get you to financial freedom. There’s nothing as pleasant as earning a living from what you like doing. However, to be successful in a home-based bakery business, there are a number of things that you’ll need to do.
Legal Requirement of a bakery business
When it comes to baking industry, whether home-based or otherwise, hygiene is the most essential obligation. Before anything else, it’s important that you check with your area’s health department, to find out whether home bakery businesses are allowed and what legal obligations you need to comply with. These may include permits, licenses, insurance and so on. Some states prohibit home-based bakeries altogether.
Bakery Business plan
Like all other businessess, a home based bakery business will require a a business plan. A business plan doesn’t have to be as detailed as those plans taught as business school, it can be as simple as list of expenses. On a piece of paper, draw to columns. on one side head it expenses and the opposite side head it projected income. Sum up all your expenses and the total should be written down at the top of projected income. The projected income should give you a target of monthly sales you need to make to break even.
Kitchen Modification
Before being handed the baking permit, the health and food inspector will have to come to your home personally to inspect your kitchen. Apart from cleanliness, sanitation and the way you store your food, it’s important to modify your kitchen area, creating a commercial area from where you’ll be distributing your baked goods.
Make a list of Goods you want to bake
You’ll need to identify the goods you want to be baking and selling to your consumers. There are so many types of events where you can sell your goods, including parties, birthdays, showers etc. Be as creative as you can. To be competitive in the market, you may want to offer new products or bake goods that are not commonly sold. The list of the items you want to bake and sell may also be a good description for pricing and marketing purposes.
Baking Equipments
You will have to buy bakery containers, which you can easily find at local stores. Alternatively, you can search online for food containers.
Website
Create a website dedicated to your home-based baking services. This will be useful for advertising your products and services, such as what you specialize in and how people can order for your baked goods. You may want to create an online store for ordering purposes. Alternatively, you can provide your consumers with a special phone number which they can use to place orders.
Marketing Bakery Products
Once you’re satisfied with all fundamental requirements such as paperwork, equipment and that everything is in place, you need to plan on how to get your products out to your consumers. To broaden your market, you can begin by utilizing locally available opportunities such as flea markets and farmers’ markets, where you can set up booths or promotional tables and give out freebies to your prospects. Make use of such forums and opportunities to distribute your marketing tools such as business cards and full info about your location and all your products. You may also want to give out order sheets to your prospective customers with ordering details and so on.
Lastly, consider marketing your products to the local restaurants and eateries. It may be involving in the initial moments but soon customers will be looking for you to place orders.