5 home baking business startup tips

If you’re considering starting a baking business, you will have considered your home as the workplace. Did you know that over 60% of new businesses in the UK are started from a home base; including baking businesses?

It’s good to do some preparation before starting out so you’ll be ready to start selling and promoting your new business. Here’s some points to bear in mind:

• Create separate space – this may seem like common sense when starting a baking business but create dedicated space in the house/kitchen so when you’re in that space, you are ‘at work’- bearing in mind the nature of basing a baking business at home, your kitchen must be registered as health and safety checked by your local council. Contact them to arrange an inspection visit via http://www.direct.gov.uk/
• Keep the neighbours on side – with a baking business smells may come from the house (albeit tantalising ones) and more traffic to your home from deliveries or customers. Be sure therefore to let your neighbours know your plans and minimise the disruption to them. That way you’re more likely to happily run the business from home and the neighbours will happily live alongside you.    
• Promote – the business is up and running and you’re ready to start promoting and making sales. Consider displaying at farmers markets to get your name out there – and your bread in people’s shopping bags! Contact the environmental health officer at your local council to get approval for displaying at the markets which you can track at http://www.farmersmarkets.net/
• Leverage technology – there are many low cost tools and applications to help you promote the business and sell your produce. Consider blogging about your bread-making with free tools Blogger or Wordpress or start tweeting  to make customers aware of new offers and baking progress. Sign up on sites such as http://www.tastia.com/ which will bring you to the attention of customers across the UK. 
• Outsource – focus on what you do best (baking) and outsource the rest. Hand over accounts to an accountant, exchange bread in return for PR help, and check out Virgin Digital Help which essentially acts as outsourced IT support. Doing deals to outsource activity will free up your time to devote to the part of the business you love and the reason you started in the first place!

Emma Jones is the founder of Enterprise Nation and author of books including ‘Spare Room Start Up – how to start a business from home’ and ‘Working 5 to 9 – how to start a business in your spare time’.