Cash from Baking??

Sheffield_Tiger

parapusher wrote: »

Look on this site to see if there is one near you:
http://www.country-markets.co.uk/

Off topic but what a marvellous website...no interest in selling or buying in fact, but within 3 brief clicks I found a Leek bake that sounds delicious and would be easy to adapt to a vegan recipe.

I think I shall bake it this weekend :beer:

elfen

abby....if you've got a gluten-free cake recipe that works....any chance I could snaffle a copy for my baking? All the cakes I've done with GF flour come out cack, so I REALLY need a decent cake recipe to satisfy my GI and OH's need for cake

parapusher

borders_dude wrote: »

What a odd amount to pay.

I thought that too! Hardly seemed worth it! But I assure you, it's not a misprint.

paulwf

debbie_debt wrote: »

Thanks Pooky, thats a brilliant help!

I can't imagine I'd manage near that level of sales, but out of interest have you any idea of the profit she makes per market selling that sort of amount?

Thank you!!

The key to any catering business is to know precisely what your gross profit margin is and stick to it, i.e. work out your cost of goods before you set the retail price. A lot of catering businesses that fail do so because they don't keep track of their cost of goods.

You can probably get a 50% gross profit margin, perhaps a bit more although I don't think you'll get a much higher figure as at farmers market you need a unique selling point to compete with mass produced rivals...such as using organic flour and fairtrade sugar in your cupcakes.

Let's say you sell a cupcake for £1.20 with a 50% GP, you make a profit of 60p. Now lets assume half of your gross profit goes on other costs, so your net profit (the bit you get to keep) is actually 30p. To earn £60 in wages a day you'd need to sell 200 cupcakes.

Now remember that as you are self employed you don't get sick pay and holiday pay etc, so you need to earn quite a bit extra to cover 28 days holiday and perhaps 3 days sick pay a year. It's amazing quite how much more your basic pay needs to be when self employed.

The sales figures the other poster gives shows you can make a reasonable return but I think that must be a busy market, I don't think stalls at my local one are that busy. I would say it also makes sense to do some sweet and some savoury items and some large items and some cheap items...give yourself several revenue streams.

The advice to get in a few shops, perhaps wholefood shops, is also good advice. Larger, regular orders is going to be essential if you want it to be a significant earner.

paulwf

The key to any catering business is to know precisely what your gross profit margin is and stick to it, i.e. work out your cost of goods before you set the retail price. A lot of catering businesses that fail do so because they don't keep track of their cost of goods.

You can probably get a 50% gross profit margin, perhaps a bit more although I don't think you'll get a much higher figure as at farmers market; you need a unique selling point to compete with mass produced rivals...such as using organic flour and fairtrade sugar in your cupcakes.

Let's say you sell a cupcake for £1.20 with a 50% GP, you make a profit of 60p. Now lets assume half of your gross profit goes on other costs, so your net profit (the bit you get to keep) is actually 30p. To earn £60 in wages a day you'd need to sell 200 cupcakes.

Now remember that as you are self employed you don't get sick pay and holiday pay etc, so you need to earn quite a bit extra to cover 28 days holiday and perhaps 3 days sick pay a year. It's amazing quite how much more your basic pay needs to be when self employed.

The sales figures the other poster gives shows you can make a reasonable return but I think that must be a busy market, I don't think stalls at my local one are that busy. I would say it also makes sense to do some sweet and some savoury items and some large items and some cheap items...give yourself several revenue streams.

The advice to get in a few shops, perhaps wholefood shops, is also good advice. Larger, regular orders is going to be essential if you want it to be a significant earner.

TashaC

Hi, I 'm also thinking about selling food, biscuits in particular. I would love to sell them in order to make some money on a part-time basis, whilst at uni! I was thinking about selling at a small market. In terms of selling I know you will need someone from the food agency/ local council to inspect the premises where the food is prepared. http://www.food.gov.uk is a really good source of information for people who want to start catering. There seems to be a few of us who want to sell homemade produce maybe we could help each other out?

skintbint_2

tashaC, that would be great if we could support one another i am going to try and do some costing tomorrow going on the recipes i use, i have done it for a madeira novelty cake and it comes out at around the £7-8 for ingredients (i dont use cheap brands as i feel they dont come up to scratch for soemthing like cakes) i buy my icing in 5kg blocks from a local bakers and colour it myself using powder colouring from squires kitchens. Will post my costings here if you feel that may be helpful. i did see on the grabbit board that glace cherries at Sainsburys were down from £1.99 to 49p a brilliant saving but unfortunately my nearest is 20+ miles away and at the moment its blowing a blizzard and -11 so dont think i will be going there tomorrow ort possibly anywhere!!!!!

paulwf

skintbint wrote: »

tashaC, that would be great if we could support one another i am going to try and do some costing tomorrow going on the recipes i use,

Doing costings is an excellent step forward. Do some market research at the farmers markets (no pun intended) or even do some test batches and see what friends would be willing to pay for what portion sizes. Knowing both the ideal retail cost and the ingredients cost will allow you to tweak the two until the best compromise is made between quality and retail price.

Don't forget to factor in wastage. You may burn some cakes, some of your ingredients for seasonal cakes may go out of date, some cakes may get dropped, some may just not sell...it shouldn't be a high figure (and luckily you get to eat the waste!) but best to factor in 5%.

TashaC

Great to hear skintbint, have just enrolled on a sugarcraft course starting next week so I'm really looking forward to that at the moment I don't have a clue about decoration! defo agree on the ingredients front, was using cheap ingredients, but using better quality stuff seems to make a difference to the texture.
paulwf love the idea of getting friends round to help price also think its a good way to get opinions on what recipes to use. Planning on making a mixture of cookies / biscuits to see what the favourites are!

blue~skies_3

Hi eveyone! I am currently looking for ways to up my income and this sounds like the perfect idea for me! I ave always been good at baking but I haven't yet explored the realms of cake decoration. I'm quite artistic and think I owuld really enjoy it. Can I just ask for some advice from those of you who are more experienced as to where you learnt to decorate and which course are the best?

TashaC if you don't mind where are you doing your course is it a local college or something? xxxx