To start a home baking / cupcake business?

[skittletittle]

On maternity , we've now decided I don't need to/don't want to go back to work right away. Would love to start a home baking business, but not sure if I'm being delusional.

Assuming the cakes are decent enough.. what pros and cons can you see? Has anyone done this themselves and have any positive or negative advice?

Someone did a thread on Ask Me Anything recently. Lots of interesting perspectives on professional cake making.

I'm afraid I wouldn't advise setting up a soap business unless you really know what you're doing. You need cosmetic safety assessments, which are costly, plus insurance, and there's a lot of paperwork involved in legal compliance. Same with bath bombs or anything similar. You can't make real soap while being responsible for a baby or young child, because it's dangerous - sodium hydroxide is used to make the soap, one of the substances currently being used in acid attacks which tells you how dangerous it can be when wrongly used.

You could make and sell melt and pour soap, which doesn't have the same safety implications, but you still need a cosmetic safety assessment and insurance, and it takes time and effort to become skilled at doing the type of special effects that people will pay for. If you just want to melt soap and colour and scent it, you probably won't sell much because the market is already saturated.

It is possible to make a go of a soap business, but it's not an easy option and takes a lot of time, hard work and experience, as well as money to pay for the initial outlay. My advice would be to research it thoroughly before you think about starting.

The lady down the road from me charges £10 for a box of 4 cupcakes and she's had to close her books as she was maxed out over the last 2 weeks doing teachers cakes and needs to start doing wedding cakes.! Another lady I got a quote from charges £80 for standard non fancy cake and she's fully booked until the beginning of September so they are obviously doing well in my area of Surrey.
It's a shame I can't cook fuck all 😂
Good luck op.

Haven’t read replies sorry but;

1. it takes over your house! Or it did for me anyway
2. couldn’t be arsed with the promo etc and competing with all the Mumbakers who charge pittance

Baking/decorating while the kids slept was OK but had a lot of late nights. I teach now instead and in the future would like to bake again but would go back to a professional kitchen and be an employee. Much better!

Good luck though, just my opinion, you might find it brilliant! And of course, baking cakes for a living is a pretty good deal whichever way you cut it so I’m being picky!

(Teach cake docrating, that is)

Free Cakes for Kids is a cake charity thing. Haven’t done anything for them personally.

Also Etsy-wise, if it’s modelling you like you could sell cake toppers that way.

You totally should OP! The only reason I would say no is if you were going to depend on the income it brings.
I live in the countryside sort of and wish there were more places round here that did cake and hot drinks.

I have a novelty cake business and make plenty from it. Have been running for 4 years but it's not my only income
I love it and find people will happily pay 60\70 for birthday cakes
You need to be good though and I wouldn't bother with cupcakes they are fiddly and not very profitable

Have recently started a business myself in a different field. What I would say though is, if you don't have big overheads, which you won't, what have you got to lose? You'll lose income as an employee and a bit of investment for kit, but beyond that not much.