What do you need to start your own bakery?

Starting a bakery in this day and age doesn’t just mean concerning yourself with where to actually make the cakes. It means putting yourself in the most competitive position possible, with easily accessible orders for your customers and the right packaging for transporting your baked creations.

Learning how to start a bakery business can be daunting—and there’s no doubt a lot to learn—but the essentials are rather straightforward, and we’re here to help. Let’s have a look.

What do you need to start a bakery?

First things first, there’s the obvious essentials.

You need somewhere to bake and organise the actual work of your business. This means taking orders, making your goods, and being able to package them up. If you want to do this from home, you can!

However, there are plenty of requirements to digest first. You need to abide by food safety standards and register as a food business. Registration is incredibly simple and mustn’t be skipped, and it should be done even if you’re operating out of a separate location from your home.

Let’s jump ahead. Once you’ve got your kitchen and your right to operate as a food business, you can start building the actual business.

You’ll need plenty of equipment and supplies: pots and pans, spatulas, knives, a shed load of ingredients, and hygiene supplies including gloves, surface cleaner, and stuff to keep your hands clean like soap and antibacterial gel.

Spending a bit more for high-quality equipment will serve you well here. Cheap pans with low-quality coatings could ruin your bakes or even leave flecks of coating as they start to degrade, which is not something you can risk when running a business.

Last but most certainly not least, you’ll need high-quality cake boxes to transport your finished bakes. It would be absolutely heart-breaking to pour love into one of your first orders only for the box to fall apart and send your hard work hurtling to the floor.

Cake boxes are especially important to consider because that’s the part of your business that the customer brings home. Once the cakes or pastries or cookies have been reduced to crumbs, the box has a last chance to leave the customer with a good impression and imprint your branding and business info onto their mind.

For events, such as birthdays and other celebrations, your gorgeous cake could end up hooking a swathe of new customers. Presentation is key!

How much does it cost to set up a bakery?

Registering your food business with your local authority is free. Your registration also cannot be refused, which means that as well as not having to pay for your registration, you can also ensure you’re not wasting time attempting to register only to be rejected.

When it comes to the real cost of having a bakery ready, it all depends on where you’re operating from and what you’ve already got to work with. Setting up a workplace from scratch including buying the oven and ingredients is going to demand a lot of upfront cost. Bakery ovens cost thousands, and renting a business space will mean considerably monthly payments.

On the other hand, operating from your own kitchen often means a much smoother start, financially speaking. Just be conscious of how much work you might need to take on, and whether you need to pay for an extra pair of hands to help, or for marketing to help expand the reach of your business.

Luckily, one of the most affordable ways to kit out your baking business is with professional cake supplies and boxes, making sure your hard work stays perfect right up to arriving with your customers.

Do I need cake boxes?

Definitely. Cake boxes keep your bakes level and secure when being transported, which is vitally important even when they’re only being moved a short distance from your bakery to the customer’s hands.

Additionally, cakes can quickly lose their quality if left out in open air. Cake boxes protect the taste and texture of your cakes as much as the cakes themselves.

Getting the right packaging

Packaging Chimp offers the perfect packaging solutions whether private or for business. Our eco packaging options make sure nothing goes to waste and that you can send items with environmentally conscious efficiency.

To find out more, get in touch with us today.

Have we given you some ideas on how to start a bakery business at home? If so, check out our wide range of cake packaging supplies, available to order with free shipping and next-day delivery!

Whether you want cupcake boxes, cake boxes with lids, eco packaging, or mailing boxes, we have a package to suit.

If you want bespoke packaging, get in touch with our team and we will help to produce a full range of branded packaging options too.