If you are good at
making cakes, jams, sweets and so on you can make some extra pocket money
selling them at local fairs and car-boot sales. If it gets really popular you
could make a whole business out of it and sell regularly at fairs and over the
internet.
What’s involved?
Our advice is to start small and then build up
your business if you want to. This isn’t something that you necessarily have to
do on a regular basis – if you’re a little short of cash one week then it’s easy
enough to hunt down your next local car boot sale and get baking. You’ll need to
have a good few recipes under your belt and a reasonable idea of what people
would buy. Although you don’t have to be qualified at all for this – there are
hundreds of baking/cake decorating courses you can go on which are likely to
benefit the quality of your products. You can find courses on LearnDirect.
How do you do it?
Step 1: Research
Take a trip to your local car boot sale or farmers'
market and look for which food stalls are the busiest. If it seems like jam is
the ‘in-thing’ and there aren’t that many stalls that sell it, you’ve found your
product. If you’re at a car boot and there aren’t any stalls selling food then
it’s a good idea to take a look at the people that are there. Are they the sort
who would prefer to buy upmarket, fancy, homemade produce or a couple of 10p
fairy cakes to nibble on while they have a browse for basement bargains? Make
the kind of cakes you think you could sell easily.
Ask your family and
friends what they’d like. Try to ask a wide range of people and see if you come
out with any unanimous decisions. Also, speak to any cake sellers you see at
fairs and markets and ask them which cakes sell best.
It’s also important
to research the legislation about any food safety standards you will have to
meet to keep on the right side of the law.
The law says that all food
businesses must register their kitchens with their local authority unless they
operate on a "casual and limited" basis only; so if you’re simply selling once
in a blue moon at a car boot sale or market then you don’t need to worry.
However, if you are planning on making some sort of income through this then
contact your local council and ask them what the rules are in your area: oddly
the laws vary depending on where you live. In some places you will need to
become a registered trader even if you only sell your food once every couple of
months.
If you do have to register your kitchen then it’s totally free
and the council is obliged to accept your application. Be aware that if you are
regularly selling food produce then it’s highly likely you’ll need to take a course in food hygiene.
You can do this over the internet and
it’ll cost you about £30. The course is mostly just common sense so it’s
reasonably easy and you can complete it in your own time.
Step 2: Costings
If you want to make
this worth your while then you need to do some basic costings. It doesn’t have
to be complicated. Here’s a list of things you’ll need to take into
consideration:
- Cost of the ingredients
- Cost of the sale location fee (car boot sale/farmers market fee) if there is one
- Cost of travel to the location
- Cost of the food packaging (keep it simple to start with – just clingfilm will do in some places)
- Initial cost of food hygiene training (if you’re planning on regular sales)
- Cost of labels/general stationery/invoicing pads
- Extra cost of gas or electricity for your oven
Once you’ve
worked out how much all of this should cost you, you should be able to work out
how much you’ll need to sell your cakes for to break even and then make a
profit. While you do your research, you should be taking note of how much other
stallholders sell their cakes and foods for to get a rough idea of how much you
can reasonably expect to charge.
If you would have to price your
products at an extortionate amount then see if there’s anywhere you can cut back
on costs. Shop around for cheaper ingredients or look for different locations
that aren’t as pricey. If you’re looking to find the cheapest stationery or
labels then have a look at our Buying business
stationery article, where we’ve searched for the best-value
companies.
Step 3: Recipe experimentation
Once you’ve got a
good idea of the kind of people you’re going to be selling to, it’s time to get
your product sorted. You’ll need to come up with a range of different products
to make this work. If you want to sell jams then make taster pots of all
different flavours and try out different variations of ingredients. For cakes,
try out different methods, ingredients, flavours and fillings. Get your friends
and family to try all your samples out and find out which are the most popular
choices.
It’s worth knowing that at farmers' markets you’re not likely
to sell a lot unless you use local, organic ingredients. People that go to these
events look for traditional homemade foods and one of the pros of shopping for
food at a farmers market is that you’re able to ask the stallholder precisely
where the food came from and how it was made. Stallholders at farmers markets
should be prepared to give honest, credible answers to customers so factor these
more expensive ingredients into your budget.
Step 4: Location
Before you decide to
make a real go of this, it’s advisable that you give it a few test runs on a
site that isn’t going to cost you the earth. Try out a stall at a car boot sale
first of all because it will only cost you between £5 and £15 to set up there.
You can find your nearest car boot sale on
Carbootjunction.com.
Once you are more established
you might consider going a little more upmarket, although if you have cracked
the car-boot market you could also simply increase the number of cakes you take
with you and let your business grow that way. There are a number of other
outlets that will let you sell your goods too such as the
Women’s Institute, which runs
country markets around the UK. It costs just 5p to join and
they’ll take about 10% commission on sales to cover the costs of the market. To
join, you just need to pop down to your local market and have a word with the
controller. You can find the contact details for your local market on the
website or you can call their head office on 01246 261508 for more
information.
To set up a stall at a farmers' market, you need to find one
local to you. You can do this by searching the Certified Farmers' Markets website for your nearest market.
The website doesn’t deal directly with the people who run the markets so you can
contact them via the details they provide on the site.
Step 5: Presentation
Presentation is
important, particularly if you sell at an upmarket venue. Consider your
customers: are they going to want "cheap and cheerful", or posh-looking homemade
produce? Packaging can affect your sales in a big way. Ribbon is cheap if you
buy in bulk and can neaten up any edges around your cakes. If you’re selling
jams it’s worth getting some fancy labels printed, or spending some time
decorating your own. Whatever you do use to package your products, it’s
important to remember that you’re dealing with food. This means that you are
limited to certain types of packaging depending on what food you’re selling.
It’s mainly the use of adhesives which is restricted but again – you’ll need to
contact your local council for more information.
Step 6: Taking it further
A simple way to get
some repeat business is to get some business cards printed off. If you’re making
cakes then you could advertise the fact that you bake to order for parties and
events if your kitchen can take the strain. Pop into local cafés and coffee
shops (not the chain outlets), hand them your card and make your services known
– maybe even provide them with a few samples.
Useful contacts
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