Cash from Baking??

Blue_Fox

If you go, my advise would be to buy as many "cake craft and decoration" magazines you can. The magazines from previous years are one pound each if I remember correctly and if you buy more your have an extra discount. The magazines are gold mine for a beginner or even advanced ones; they have step by step instructions for all the cakes. And the magazines for this year you can buy them next year like a true MSE , otherwise you are going to pay 3 arms and one leg!

Their big stall is usually near the entrance, or at least it was last year and two years ago.

Blue_Fox

mrscupcake wrote: »

Love the idea of cupcakes for christmas lol get to give pressies that you enjoy making and advertise at the same time!!

Right guys - I have been allocated a slot for a friday morning farmers market and if all goes well I'll be able to do 2 friday's a month so I'm very excited.

It's my first one so can I ask for a bit of advice as to how many cupcakes you think I should bake? With it being a friday I don't think it will be too busy although it has a good stream of regulars. It's in a town that is a bit of an aging community and I'm guessing on a friday there will be mostly pensioners so I was going to go for old facvourites mini victoria sponges, carrot cake cupcakes and some chocolate ones.

Any tips? Will 150 cupcakes be too many do you think? Thanks!

In time you'll see that the pensioners are the best customers and the returned ones. They are usually very nice and they love to chat . Don't forget to give samples!! Before closing time if you still have products reduce the price if you don't want to go home with them (some they might wait for that to happen to come to buy). Another thing that you can do is to sell them cheap to your neighbors; tell them that your are going to give them x cakes for y pounds when you are coming back from the market IF you have any left.

I don't know about 150 cupcakes, you are the one that knows the area. But your table has to look full and vibrant!

Good luck and I'm waiting the report on Friday :A.

skintbint_2

havent done a market yet, but i think small loafs, cherry scones, tea loaf etc would go down better for pensioners not sure you'd get the price for cupcakes, will just be a bit of trial and error - good luck and let us know how you get on

mrscupcake_2

skintbint wrote: »

havent done a market yet, but i think small loafs, cherry scones, tea loaf etc would go down better for pensioners not sure you'd get the price for cupcakes, will just be a bit of trial and error - good luck and let us know how you get on

This what I'm worried about :-/ ...oh gawd hope I'm not making a big mistake. I'm trying to remain positive by remembering that it's not the hugest outlay on the world to bake a few cakes if people don't buy them. If I go for scones and mini loaves I think the other stall holders might get funny as some of them offer baked goods too.

Thanks for the advice peeps - and thanks for the idea re. samples too!

neneromanova

Yey. OH says i can go on the saturday so I'm all good to go so if anyone's going on the saturday we could meet up although i wouldn't be there til something like 12. Also I'll have a good weapon with me. Scarlett's pushchair I'll try and attach a cow catcher on the front so that I can get people out the way

Bluefire

mrscupcake wrote: »

Any tips? Will 150 cupcakes be too many do you think?

Firstly, well done for getting yourself a stall sorted! I'm certainly no expert having only done 3 stalls, but I just thought I'd pass on what little advice I can!

Obviously you won't know for sure what amount of cupcakes to bake until you've finished your first market. Personally I would err on the side of caution; unless you've got somewhere to offload unsold cupcakes afterwards perhaps it's better to bake fewer for your first stall and sell out than make too many of have loads left. After all, if you're going to be doing this regularly then as long as you make sure you've covered the cost of your stall & your ingredients on the first go, then you can increase your quantities from there once you've got more of an idea of what you can sell.

Just to give you an idea, my first stall was at a carnival with about 2500 people attending. I made just over 100 cupcakes and was one of 2 cupcake stalls attending, and came home with 12 (which was in part due to the fact it rained & even though the stall was undercover everything still got wet plus the crowds died down rapidly after that) Second stall was a farm family fun day with about 300 people, made 75 & sold out after 3 hours (should have made more!) The farmers' market I've recently done is only held 4 times a year & is quite popular, not sure how many people were there but I made 148 cupcakes & came home with 10.

At the end of the day the most important things to know is how much on average each cake is costing you to make, and how much profit you make from each cake you sell (including any packaging costs) I sell mine in the form of '1 for £... 2 for £... or 4 for £...' from that I worked out the minimum amount of profit I make per cake & can very quickly say 'I've made this many, it's cost me bla bla to make them and if I sell them all I'll make a minimum of this much profit.'

I hope that makes some sense! Also make sure you get yourself some business cards printed up, in case anybody wants to make an order for a birthday or wedding!

mrscupcake_2

Thanks Bluefire that's really helpful I am definately going to be quite conservative with my numbers first time round!

I love this thread it's been so helpful and really given me the confidence to go and sell as I wouldn't have had the guts to before!

I'm interested to know...what baking fat do you all use? I always use unsalted butter for bakng and buttercream but have started exploring other cheaper options. I don't want to opt for stork if it will impact the taste though. I noticed in Sainsburys yesterday they do a baking block for 50p which is much cheaper than butter so would this give a rubbish result? Would love to know if any of you have experimented with a few and which you prefer.

I'm having lots of fun looking at ideas for halloween cupcakes on google images with the internet these days there really is no need for books as so many ideas on various sites! Saw a fab recipe for malteser cupcakes this morning that I might treat the husband to!

skintbint_2

remember if your registered with IR i'm sure that you can write them off as waste if you have too many.

skintbint_2

mrs cupake - i always use butter for butter cream but use the Tesco marg @ about £2.48 for 2 1/2 kg and it works great. used to always use stork but thought i'd try cheaper options and found this to be just as good hth

hayley11

I use Stork in my baking and the for my buttercream half real butter and half stork. I've tried using just stork or just butter and either the taste hasn't been great or it's too soft to pipe with so half and half works best for me. I tried Trex in my buttercream after looking at american recipes but didn't like the taste of it at all.

I am going to a cafe in an hour to see if they will stock my cupcakes. BRICKING IT!! I am not a sales person or a confident person! I think the only reason i'm going actually is because I go in there all the time and know they're nice people! Wish me luck