Starting A Cupcake Business – Things I wish I’d known..
1. You’ll actually miss baking.
To start with you’ll sit at your desk a lot more than you bake. I had no real concept of this when I started. Suddenly, I really missed Sunday afternoons spent baking, where I was now busy working on spreadsheets and learning web design (well, muddling through). Have faith though, it’s all worth it in the end and it’s what will help you be a success. It means that you’re spending time on building a concept, a website, marketing, making a plan and all of the other things that will make your business successful, rather than just a hobby that sometimes people pay you for.
2. Buy some really comfy shoes.
When you go from a 9 – 5 office job to suddenly baking on your feet for hours a day (when the work from point 1 above starts coming in) your feet hurt. I mean, REALLY hurt. Not like walking around the shops all day. It was about a year and 20,000 cupcakes later that I realised I needed to wear trainers in the kitchen. It makes such a difference! Do that before you are suffering with grumpy feet like I did.
3. Buy some Neutrogena hand cream.
When you start to wash your hands 10 times a day and take them in and out of the oven loads (especially if it happens to be winter too) your hands get sore and dry really quickly. Have some super strength hand cream ready to save your valuable tools! The only one we’ve found really works is Neutrogena.
Hope you find my tips useful. Before we started running classes and expanded to the little team we are now, I ran Blue Door Bakery alone, baking for over 100 wedding orders a year from my home kitchen and domestic oven. So, the above tips are from my own hard earned experience!
If you’d like any more business advice feel free to leave a comment here, or we do run also run a full day Cupcake Business Class.
Sarah x