Before I start giving you the tips, I’d like to advise you to hire as many professionals as you can afford to help you, especially if you’re not coming from a business world. There are lots of things to pay attention to, and lots of possibilities to get screwed over. A professional could save you from this.
Step 1 – A Business Plan
Before you apply for licenses and start gathering recipes, sit down and make a business plan. This is a good thing to do for two reasons – first of all, it will give you an insight of what to expect and what you’ll need to work on, and second of all, if you’re looking for investors, they’ll want to see a good business plan.
Your plan should consist of everything that has anything to do with your new home based business. Write down the expected expenses, expected income, as well as, marketing strategies you plan to apply. Write down anything that crosses your mind, it could only help you on your way.
Step 2 – Evaluate Expenses
Starting your own home based bakery could be quite an expensive project. You’ll need a lot of money to invest in the beginning, and you can’t really expect it to pay off immediately.
Most of the initial investments will be spent on buying professional ovens, and other kitchen supplies. For instance, only the oven could cost you between $10,000 and $20,000, plus all the other appliances. And you need to count in the costs of acquiring licenses, which brings us to the next step.
Step 3 – Licenses, Regulations and Insurance
If you’re still not backing up from the idea of starting a home based bakery, you’ll need to deal with some licenses and regulations. The number of licenses you’ll need depends mostly on the state you live in, so the best idea is to ask locally.
You’ll probably need to pass a health inspection of your bakery, and you can expect occasional inspections each year. Some states require you to have a business license, while others don’t. Your local small business office could help you with anything you need concerning this.
Some licenses only allow you to sell rolls and breads from a home bakery, but not fruit pies or cream-filled pastry, so make sure you acquire a license according to what you’ll make.
Another thing you should pay attention to is – liability insurance. You don’t want to be sued if someone gets real or fake food poisoning from your food. Considering this – do not forget to mention all the allergens that your food might have.
Step 4 – Decide What You Want to Bake
You could go with a bakery that will specialize in whole grain bread, or you could go with pies, cookies, muffins and filled pastry. Choose the thing you’re the best at, to begin with.
Once your business grows you’ll be able to expand it, and start baking things you didn’t bake in the beginning. When you’re just starting out, the most important thing is to have the best product, so don’t experiment, and go with good, proven recipes.
Also, make sure to keep your recipes consistent. You’ll lose a lot of customers if they realize that your muffins are not as good two months after you opened, as they were in the very beginning.
Step 5 – Make Sure You Have a Good Product
No matter what you decide to bake, you need to make sure that it is a product worth spending money on. You can’t expect people to buy something that has no taste, you need to offer some really delicious baked goods.
Bake a couple of pies, or whatever it is you would like to sell, and invite your friends, and your neighbors to your house. Offer them to try your baked goods and ask for their honest opinion on it. The more opinions you gather, the better your products will be.
Step 6 – Advertise
You could easily have the best product in the world, but if no one has ever heard of it, it might as well not exist. This is why you need to put some extra effort in advertising your home based bakery.
Send notes to local newspapers even before you open. Create a website and inform all of your friends and neighbors that you are opening a bakery. Offer to bake something for a charity organization, or offer samples of your goods in the street. Bake some muffins and carry them to a nearby big company and ask if you can leave them as free samples for the employees to try. Make sure you leave business cards, or leaflets, so that people could reach you.
Choose a name, and create a logo for your bakery. Come up with something that’s easy to remember and that associates people to food – Sweet Bites for example is a much better idea than Sarah’s Home Bakery. The logo should be small but still striking and it will be great if you could come up with a catchy slogan.
Well, these are the 6 steps to follow if you want to start your own home bakery. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for you ladies, and I’d like to hear about your experiences.
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