Start Your Own Cake Decorating Business at Home

You've probably made a cake at some time in your life, and chances are you have iced or frosted a cake as well. Then why not start your own cake decorating business at home? Think about it. Everybody has a birthday once a year, a large number of people get married, and there are thousands of retirements, graduations, and baby showers in your area each year, along with a number of other special occasions that are celebrated with the cutting of a cake as a centerpiece of the formalities. Someone is paid for making and decorating those cakes (millions every year!), so why not you?

It is vital to run this most artistic of enterprises as a business - you may be doing it because you love the art of cake decorating (and who could blame you - some of the cakes I have seen are simply breathtaking in their beautyof design and skill of execution), but it is an expensive and time consuming hobby and really needs to turn a profit to enable continued enjoyment.

Besides - if you want to make and decorate cakes for fun - who is going to eat them? Plenty of people make a good living by running their own home based cake decorating business, but they have to take it seriously and work hard at both their cake decorating skills and their business management skills to do so. Following are a few things to consider when starting your own cake decorating business:

Choose a niche area to start with

The cake design industry is enormously varied: novelty cakes for childrens' birthdays, gorgeous creations of three tiered baroque extravagances for weddings, or the refined glamor of some of the modern minimalist designs - whatever niche you choose to start with, research it thoroughly, check out the competition, decide exactly what your product is, and then take the time to practice and perfect it until you are ready to start offering your cakes to the market. What you must not do to start with is to try and cover all genres - each has different styles, materials, market, and expectations, so choose one and work it until you have a thorough understanding of it and a well established customer base. Once you have mastered one genre, you can start on another. You will find that many of the skills you have mastered in one genre are easily transferable to another, and the new skills you pick up are interchangeable with other niches.

Master your skills and techniques

Before you can offer your cake decorating service to the public, you need to be sure that your skills and your product are of a sufficiently high standard.

Take classes or online courses if you need to, or just refine your methods at home. Then practice, practice, practice - you will eventually achieve perfection. Try out your creations at family occasions - you will soon know if people are going to like your cake decorating enough to pay for it. If your baking and decorating skills are up to standard (and if they're not, this can be easily achieved by means of online courses, instructional videos, or evening classes held in your area) then you are ready to enter the fascinating, creative, and profitable world of running your own cake decorating business from home.

Don't forget to promote your business

Word of mouth is the best, but not the only, way to promote your cake decorating business. Most special occasion cakes will be seen by a lot of people at once, and if they like what they see, they will want to know who made it. You should view all guests at these occasions as potential clients, and the cake itself as your 'shop window'. It is also important to use other avenues for promotion - paid advertising has its place if researched thoroughly and used wisely - but a lot of your best advertising will come from word of mouth generated by the quality of your product and the reliability of your service.

There is a lot more to starting a cake decorating business than just the making and decorating of cakes. You need to plan and promote your business, you need to do market research, and you will need to deal with tax, health, and maybe commerce departments. You will also need a basic understanding of business accounting before you start so you can keep track of expenditure from the very beginning (and of course the profits which will naturally follow!) It is important to develop your competency in all these areas at the same time that you are perfecting your cake decorating skills, and then you will be ready to launch your enterprise in a professional and profitable manner. Here are a few things to consider (in conjunction with the tips presented in part 1 of this series):

Presentation

How well you present yourself and your cake will determine whether you are seen as a professional, skilled operator, or just an amateur who doesn't really know what you are doing. This applies just as much to your general business practises as it does to the cake itself. Have your samples, photos, and price lists laid out cleanly and clearly, ready to show clients. Give them a copy of all other relevant information laid out in a simple, clear, and professional manner. Make sure you are dressed in a tidy and professional style when dealing with clients, and pay particular attention to personal hygiene and grooming - this is important in any food related business for obvious reasons. Always be punctual - whether for the initial consultation or for the delivery and installation of a cake - nothing is more bad mannered than lateness, and it creates additional stress for people who are already operating at a high level of tension, like a bride on her wedding day. Taking care over details like these will instill confidence in your clients that they are dealing with someone competent who takes pride in the service they are providing.

Know your limitations and work within them.

There is no point in offering to create an extravagant three tiered wedding cake with sugar sculpture flowers and figurines if your experience is thus far limited to three Elmo birthday cakes, and a chocolate mud cake for your sister's graduation dinner dessert. Different types of cakes require different levels of skill and experience, and until you have mastered them, you are best advised to stick with what you know, while always seeking to expand your skills and repertoire. Eventually you will be able to offer a full range ofdesigns for all types of occasions, but this is an ongoing process.

It is also important not to over commit. You know what you are capable of, so don't contract to deliver ten cakes on the same day if you know you can only manage two. If you cannot fit a request in, recommend the person to another supplier - they will appreciate this and remember you next time they need a cake. This is far preferable than promising something you cannot deliver, or turning up with an inferior product because you have had to do a rush job. Anyway, if you are so busy that you have to turn away business, you must be doing something right, and it will add to your reputation if people know they have to book you well in advance.

Use technology

There are all sorts of mechanical devices you can use to make the creation and decoration of a cake easier - food processors, electric knives, electric beaters - but don't overlook the fact that there are also a lot of technological advances you can use in the management and promotion of your cake decorating business. Websites, photo sharing sites, e-mail, digital photography, and digital video cameras can all be used to your advantage in this very visual of enterprises, and don't forget the accounting and bookkeeping programmes that are available. And communication – the technology now available for maintaining contact with friends, family, and business contacts is ideal for running a cake decorating business from home, and can only increase your networking and promotional capabilities.

Take advantage of it.