START WITH YOUR BUSINESS HOUSE IN ORDER
A BIT OF AN EDUCATION
For about five years, before I started my baking business, I took evening and weekend culinary classes at a local junior college. (I mentioned this in an earlier post.) I admit I was a bit apprehensive being an "older" student; however, I'm pretty outgoing and adjusted to the classroom and lab environment of one of the best culinary arts program in California. (In my opinion.) In addition to food prep, sanitation, and food calculations, my favorite courses, which served me well, were Cost Controls, Catering and both beginning and advanced Baking. Although I did not receive a degree (got an Intro to Baking certificate), the curriculum, students, and especially the professional chef instructors had an incredible impact on my motivation, skills and drive to start my own baking business.
THE PROCESS
I am quite sure I don't remember the exact order I did things, but I believe between me and my husband we came up with the business name first. (He calls me Patrice, though I'm Pat to family and friends.) I didn't want to limit my baking to just cakes as I also loved making all types of desserts: caramels, bars, cookies, breads, pastries, etc. So, the combination of "cakes and confections" was added to my name and, well, here I am: Patrice's Cakes and Confections (PCC).
Financially I started with about $1,500.00 seed money for start-up costs, licenses, permits, commercial kitchen rental and liability insurance. I opened a business checking account, deposited funds and took the plunge! Let me walk you through the steps I took to establish PCC:
LICENSES, INSURANCE AND PERMITS
- Business License
- After establishing my business name, I had to publish it with our county business licensing department for a few weeks before I could consider it mine.
- I established my business as a "sole proprietorship". I understand from reading current business websites that an "LLC" would be better to protect an owner's personal assets and have business losses or liability limited to the business entity. However, as a military veteran, I received a few benefits by owning a sole proprietor business in the form of reduced or exempt fees. This helped lower my initial start-up costs.
- Note: For those of you who are veterans, please look into your local or county licensing and permitting agencies for possible exemptions when considering a business venture.
- Liability Insurance
- Every baker needs to protect themselves and the public by obtaining and maintaining liability insurance. For me, this covers issues with my products and customers or if a problem arises within the commercial kitchen I rent. I use The Hartford. Check with your own homeowner's or renter's insurance company to determine if they have business liability insurance or can refer you to a resource.
- County Health Permit(s)
- Rental Kitchen
- The California Cottage Food industry did not exist when I started PCC. I rented a licensed commercial kitchen from a list the county provided. Some kitchens were either too costly or located further than I cared to travel. I chose a local Veterans' Hall facility and signed a rental agreement with a reasonable hourly rate. I made arrangements with the Event Planners when I scheduled my baking time so as not to interfere with the hall's planned functions.
- ServSafe Certification
- One of the requirements of owning and operating a food business is becoming certified in food safety and sanitation. I became certified through my sanitation course in culinary school. I renew this certification every five years. You can learn more about ServSafe certification from this website.
EQUIPMENT AND SUPPLIES
Your probably have most if not all of your equipment (utensils, baking pans, mixers, etc.). Since I started baking in a commercial kitchen, my equipment and food supplies had to be stored in the rental facility. Due to limited storage, I kept a small supply of chilled items in a refrigerated walk-in space and, just prior to my reserved kitchen time, I would shop for additional baking ingredients.
Remember, when you rent a kitchen, time is money. It really pays to plan your work schedule and ensure your have all necessary equipment, supplies and inventory ingredients on hand and ready to go. I must confess on several occasions I did not plan well and ended up traveling back home or to a local store to pick up what I forgot for my baking plans that day. Time consuming, yes! Costly, definitely!
However, the more "lessons learned" the better you become at organizing and planning your baking schedule, tracking inventory levels and assessing the time it takes to shop, prep, bake, package, label and deliver your products.
ADVERTISING AND ACCOUNTING
MICROSOFT PUBLISHER
In my early days with limited funding, I decided to do my own advertising and business accounting. It's amazing how many people contact you as a new business owner and want to manage your business cards, advertising and email lists, among other things. I barely had enough sales to cover food expenses and initial set up costs let alone consider paying others to help promote my business. Yes, I know it takes money and exposure to get your business off the ground. However, I was not in a position to incur debt or sign contracts to market my products.
I did it the old-fashioned way.
I taught myself, through Microsoft Publisher, how to create my own flyers and brochures, which I printed and distributed. I found a great printing company, which helped me with the odd publishing problem as well as made my business cards and farmers' market signs and banners. I went through quite a bit of printer ink and, eventually, used a local office supply store to print my brochures - when there was a sale!
SOCIAL MEDIA, EMAILS AND A WEBSITE
I'll briefly touch on social media and emails here. I have a Facebook business page, an Instagram presence, a business email (patricescakes@gmail.com) and a website www.pcconfections.com. I mostly use Facebook and Instagram. I tried mass emailing some of my brochures and sale flyers via the website; however, I noticed that many people ignore their emails, let alone respond. A 45% open rate on two email attempts was enough for me to ditch the email experiment. Perhaps there are better tactics with emails. I'm not ready to try again. My website focuses on the caramel sales for shipping (as long as I use a commercial kitchen) and advertises my local menu for individual orders and small dessert catering.
QUICKBOOKS SOFTWARE
I have a background, ancient though it may be, in business accounting. I would not suggest to a new baking business owner that you do your own books, unless you, like me, want to retain ultimate control over everything in your business. I definitely believe you should always know where your money is and where it goes. Because I started this business near retirement age, I had time and a bit of education and experience to learn the QuickBooks accounting software for Manufacturing companies. I had a small learning curve reacquainting myself with terminology from years back; however, I was determined! And, I still do my own business books using this software.
I would strongly suggest if you elect this path that you retain, at the very least, a great small business bookkeeping service. I have one and she is fabulous! I have not been without mistakes in this endeavor and spent many hours correcting and redoing accounting errors. And, I am still learning. And, I am a geek because I do love doing this as well!
And so...
This may not be the ideal place to end this blog post, but here it ends. I've spent a bit of time getting it reasonably coherent! I hope you've learned a bit from it. Please leave any comments, questions, suggestions or corrections. I would love to hear about your own experiences as well and include them in future blog posts! I hope to discuss my farmers' market adventures next time, among other topics! So, until then...
STAY SWEET!
Patrice
I taught myself, through Microsoft Publisher, how to create my own flyers and brochures, which I printed and distributed. I found a great printing company, which helped me with the odd publishing problem as well as made my business cards and farmers' market signs and banners. I went through quite a bit of printer ink and, eventually, used a local office supply store to print my brochures - when there was a sale!
SOCIAL MEDIA, EMAILS AND A WEBSITE
I'll briefly touch on social media and emails here. I have a Facebook business page, an Instagram presence, a business email (patricescakes@gmail.com) and a website www.pcconfections.com. I mostly use Facebook and Instagram. I tried mass emailing some of my brochures and sale flyers via the website; however, I noticed that many people ignore their emails, let alone respond. A 45% open rate on two email attempts was enough for me to ditch the email experiment. Perhaps there are better tactics with emails. I'm not ready to try again. My website focuses on the caramel sales for shipping (as long as I use a commercial kitchen) and advertises my local menu for individual orders and small dessert catering.
QUICKBOOKS SOFTWARE
I have a background, ancient though it may be, in business accounting. I would not suggest to a new baking business owner that you do your own books, unless you, like me, want to retain ultimate control over everything in your business. I definitely believe you should always know where your money is and where it goes. Because I started this business near retirement age, I had time and a bit of education and experience to learn the QuickBooks accounting software for Manufacturing companies. I had a small learning curve reacquainting myself with terminology from years back; however, I was determined! And, I still do my own business books using this software.
I would strongly suggest if you elect this path that you retain, at the very least, a great small business bookkeeping service. I have one and she is fabulous! I have not been without mistakes in this endeavor and spent many hours correcting and redoing accounting errors. And, I am still learning. And, I am a geek because I do love doing this as well!
And so...
This may not be the ideal place to end this blog post, but here it ends. I've spent a bit of time getting it reasonably coherent! I hope you've learned a bit from it. Please leave any comments, questions, suggestions or corrections. I would love to hear about your own experiences as well and include them in future blog posts! I hope to discuss my farmers' market adventures next time, among other topics! So, until then...
STAY SWEET!
Patrice
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