Starting baking business - HELP!

[ohthestruggles]

Hello. Long time member/poster looking for some help. I'm looking into starting my own brownie making business from home. I do have a profession which is a world away from baking, but baking is my hobby and it would be a side line, not a full time occupation. I would need to get my kitchen area checked by environmental health and do my food hygiene certificate etc, I know. I'm just wondering if there is anyone who has done this and what was it like? I have one kitchen sink so no separate hand washing other than our bathroom sink. Would this be my first stumbling block? The kitchen is also where we prep our own food etc obviously, did you have to buy another fridge for your baking? The only refrigerated items would be butter and eggs. Once baked they would be stored in an airtight container so storage not an issue. Any advice/experiences would be much appreciated!

Or if there is a better board to post this on please let me know

Have a chat with your local environmental health team and review their check list.
Google what the rules are.

I know a few people who bake and prepare food items from home from a basic standard kitchen and they passed all the required checks

Ie they prepared food items to sell

Good place to start:
www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/starting-a-food-business-from-home

@SilverBirchWithout thank you that is helpful! I will speak to environmental heath as I don't want to get too far into it and spend money to then be told my dream isn't going to come true!😂

I've once had a business involving food (not at home) and before starting asked EH to come over to go through the venue with me to plan what I needed. They were great- and it was the best way to know for sure what they wanted. A friend at the moment has a from home cake business, with a 5 star rating and doesn't have a separate sink in her kitchen -Good luck - I love brownies so hope you do well!

Someone also just raised the subject of Natasha's law, although I'm unsure wether this would apply to me

I will second what others have said - speak to your local EHO before you plan anything. It can vary wildly - so just ask them what criteria need to be met. Having done it, I’ve found them to be very helpful. In my area, if you show you are willing to take the steps to meet the required standards, once they’ve done the initial check, they tend to leave home bakers to get on with it as we are very low risk.

@Beetle76 thank you! As a home baker does Natasha's law apply? I would plan to sell via social media, I've seen other similar businesses only declare that the any of the 14 allergens may be present and the basic ingredients (not containing E numbers etc)

While I didn’t sell prepackaged baked goods (which is what I understand Natasha’s law refers to), to cover myself I did have an allergen statement on my invoice/pick up docs. All allergens in the particular goods were stated plus possible cross contamination allergens due to shared equipment. Also full ingredients lists available on request. (This would be discussed in consultation anyway.)

If you only plan on doing one thing (brownies) you may as well print an ingredients label. They aren’t difficult to draw up) but again, ask your EHO how they would like you to do it.

Sorry - emphasis on prepackaged, not prepackaged baked goods, for Natasha’s law.

I did a wide range of one-off bakes. Not small batch production baking. My EHO recognised the (small) difference.

My friend needed a second sink putting in.
Make sure you can absorb all the costs before you commit. It's not a high profit sector. X

Pre-packaged all needs to be labelled individually now.
If you are selling unwrapped it is good to have a source document of ingredients. This can be made available if required and on your website, and social media pages.
It’s not enough just to have (for example) chocolate as ingredient you need to list all the ingredients of the specific chocolate you use.
If you have pets they will need to not have access to your food prep area.
At first many of the rules may feel off-putting, but once you’ve grasped them it becomes second nature.

And pre-packed means just in a bag/box you provide, only loose products such as selling at a bake sale are not in the new Natasha’s Law changes.
I work in a local village shop and sell locally baked cakes, if we put in a bag before it is purchased it needs labelling, if the customer does it we don’t need to!

It's a fairly saturated market - does your business plan cover how you'll overcome that?

Are you planning on selling locally or online? There are already hundreds of brownie places to buy from – my go-to is Gower’s Cottage and you’d have to be selling orgasm brownies to tear me away. What’s your USP to drag people away from the masses of competition?

I know this isn’t what you specifically asked but have you worked out the sums? I make brownies as a hobby and they can be quite expensive… and compared to what people can buy in store they look “expensive”. It can be hard to make it work financially once you’ve factored everything in…

If you can supply a local coffee shop then it can work out better, or doing fairs and such like but wastage can be a problem

I do occasionally gift Gower brownies which are nearly £20 a box but ideal as a post present. And are amazing

Are you wanting to do this as a side hustle to increase your income, or as something you really enjoy that you feel like you might as well make into a business?

@Skiptheheartsandflowers it's something that I enjoy doing that I thought I may aswell make into a business, I have no expectation of it paying me the salary that my day job does.

I know it's a saturated market, but are the orhers really that good? I've had a lot of 💩 ones.

Order yourself a box of Gower Cottage, OP – if after tasting them you think you can improve on the recipe (you can’t), for cheaper, and for marketing, gain more than 17k Instagram followers and coverage in the Guardian, Telegraph, BBC and Independent, and do it sustainably, you might have a business. But that’s your level of competition, and that’s just one of them. There are thousands. As pp suggested, you may be better off doing this for local farmers markets etc.

(I don’t work for Gower, I just like them and glanced at their Insta and website just now.)

@hotmeatymilk but I've already said that it's a hobby I may aswell try as a business, as a sideline to my normal job. So there is literally zero chance of me breaking through like that. I am fully aware I have a MUCH smaller audience.

Fair enough, but the same point applies though: why would someone order your brownies vs the competition’s?

You’ll be fine if you treat it as a loss-making hobby, but a sideline implies you want some profit, and I don’t think you’ll profit from online sales – brownie ingredients are expensive and you’d need to do it at scale to break even from an online business. But you might break even or make some small profit at a farmers market where you can charge £5 a piece and bored Sunday parents like me think “Yeah, fuck it, this is worth the 10 minutes hiding behind a tree from my toddler”.

I don’t rate Gower Brownies much at all tbh.