To home bake with dogs?

[MrsJunglelow]

I mean not literally with the dogs , but bake cakes to sell from my kitchen when I have a dog (and cat) in the house?

I make lovely cakes and a friend of mine is currently making a very good living from it and frankly, I want a bit of her success too!
I’m in a diddly terrace so not massive kitchen but if I feed the animals in the hallway and pop their water bowl out there too they have no need to ever enter the kitchen.

Is it possible or will environmental health immediately refuse it on hygiene grounds?

Anyone know please? 🙏

Don't be put off by the negative comments on here. It's totally doable. To be honest if anyone produces ANY edible products from their home kitchen they have to prove that have excellent cleaning procedures in place, pets or no pets. You don't have to notify anyone about the (non existent) allergy risk of there being a pet on the premises, BECAUSE YOU WOULD HAVE CLEANED ANY TRACE OF THEM AWAY BEFORE STARTING. The majority of small producers work out of home kitchens, and there are 1000's of them. Take a look at an old TV series called James Martin Home Comforts, he profiled lots of small producers who made their products at home and you will see ordinary CLEAN kitchens!

It’s probably just a case of keeping the dog out of the area where you bake and being able to prove that to the officials.
You don’t have to be an animal hater to think that animals shouldn’t be allowed in a commercial kitchen. No-one is saying you’re unclean either.

I have a friend who has a dog and was recently passed by environmental health to bake and sell. They commended her on the cleanliness of her place!

No-one is saying you’re unclean either
Mmm, there have been a few comments insinuating us pet owners are a little grotty tbf

@FangsForTheMemory

It’s not a question of popularity, it’s a question of what’s legal. If you’re going to get stroppy about opinions you don’t want to hear, what’s the point of posting. My own opinion would be that you could only do this if you had an outbuilding or similar that the pets never have access to. I say this as I live with a cat whose ability to get his nose in everything never fails to astonish me.

OP wasn't stroppy and it's clearly perfectly legal and possible to run a baking business from home with pets as several posters have confirmed. So your opinion isn't really particularly helpful

I wouldn’t buy food from a house with pets, sorry.

So many people talking utter bollocks, as usual.

You'll need to demonstrate that your facilities can be kept clean, and that you understand proper hygiene procedures/protocols.

You might get turned down if you cannot demonstrate that you can keep animals out at all, or if your kitchen can't be correctly cleaned, but you won't be turned down for simply having animals in the rest of the house.

Seriously, no one is going to ask if you have pets if you have the correct certification!

Maybe ban the dogs from the kitchen? Would that work?

I have one and I have a dog. He just has to be out of the room when I am cooking which he is mostly anyways and I clean before I start and when I finish

I love all the posters saying No you wouldn't be granted one and they wouldn't buy from you... interspersed with the comments of people saying they've got the certificate and pets and a thriving business

My friend runs a very successful cake business from home. She has a 5 star rating. She has a retriever. He is not allowed in the kitchen when she is working and she has stringent hygiene procedures.

I’ve got four cats and a five star hygiene rating. They never come into the kitchen. I wear different clothes in the kitchen/the rest of the house so I’m not carrying fur into the kitchen. All the council want to see is that animals are kept out and if that there’s a remedy if this happens (cleaning).

@MrsJunglelow

Did we view the same house? Was it absolutely filthy, with her also being a veterinary nurse? I'm sure all of those cakes got "extras" The thought of eating cakes from there makes me feel sick Mine’s super clean I promise!

Oh I don't doubt your cleanliness and I think you should apply for a licence.

I eat at friends houses who have dogs and cats and it doesn't bother me at all. I'm nit sure id care that much about a professional kitchen.

This house was so dirty when I went to take my shoes off upon entering the estate agent said, "oh I'd leave those on if I were you"

*not sure I'd care that much about a professional kitchen

I've got a dog and a 5* hygiene rating for home baking.

What about healthy bakes for dogs and cats? There's a burgeoning market for pretty owners with disposable incomes

Interestingly, the food standards for pet food are WAY higher than food for human consumption!

I have two cats and a large hairy dog but I wouldn't buy from you Im afraid.

A colleague once brought in home made brownies and when she unwrapped them there was a cat paw print in one. She was mortified. Swore up and down her pets never entered her kitchen when baking.

Cat cafes manage to get hygiene certificates. You just have to ensure the animals don't got into the area you make the food.

No idea why people are being such arseholes on this thread 🤔

i wouldn't buy from you Im afraid

But how do you know a home baker has a cat? Or a dog? Or a child?

You don’t

I wouldn't be keen to buy from you (if I knew that you had animals in the house). Although, I'm not really your target audience.

I'm loving all these people saying they wouldn't buy from people with pets 🤣 You sound like fools. You have no idea if the people you buy things from have pets or not!

I don't know a single cafe or pub near me that doesn't have a resident dog. I know for a fact some of them go in the kitchens. You just have to be VERY on top of cleaning.

Apologies, haven't RTFT, but just wanted to say that it's very hard to make money from home baking. You have to charge so much for the ingredients, but what really costs is your time - how will you charge for that? And how will you make your product be value for money against mass-produced (but amazing-looking) cakes which are half the price?

I bake a lot, and I have done 'proper' cakes for friends (including a 3-tier one for a friend's 40th recently). She said she'd pay me - how much did I want? In the end, I just went for ingredients and gave her my time as my present (along with the cake!) and even then it was close to £60.

I've done other cakes as well for friends (children's birthdays etc) and if they want a 'theme' or a special colour combo you'll find you have to buy some kind of equipment or tool to make that happen, which adds to the cost as well. And that's on top of the basic tools like a box of a range of icing colour gels, tin sizes, icing tools, bags, nozzles etc.

People have said to me I should do it for money, but I know I wouldn't make anything like a living wage from it. And right now, people have better things to spend their (in some cases, rapidly diminishing) money on. So I just do what I've always done - cakes as presents, for birthdays and Christmas, for friends.

Oops, point of the thread - yes, have several DCats, but they are kept well away from the kitchen when I'm baking and decorating! No one has ever not wanted to eat my cakes, and they all know about the cats. But that's a private arrangement, not a business, which the OP seems to be proposing, so maybe people would think differently then.

All these people up in uproar about pets in a totally different part of the house. There's some professional kitchens with 1 and 2 star ratings who have various furry creatures in the kitchen.