Advice for selling food made from home

chemilyx

Hi there,

I'm currently considering starting up my own little business, making gluten- and dairy-free bakery goods from home. To start with, I'd only be approaching small shops and cafes and asking them if they'd be interested in selling a little bit and seeing how people respond, and I'd go from there. I'm not too concerned with where the business could go at this point, I don't want to get ahead of myself when I don't even know the basics!

What I want advice about is the rules and regulations of making/ selling food from home.

I live in a tiny one bedroom flat and don't have much kitchen space. I've never done any courses in food hygiene or preparation - my only "qualification" is that I am good at baking nice food!

So I'm pretty much at square one with this and I'm a total amateur when it comes to business.

I need to know 1) what courses I need to take/ what I will need to show to prove that I can produce the food safely 2) what I will need to put into place in my kitchen to make it acceptable to work from 3) anything else you can think of that I should know!

I would really, really appreciate any ideas on this.

Thank you so much. Charlotte

pauletruth

best to speak to environmental health. its not cheap and may not be worth your bother but check. you can't just sell to shops.think its a little easier in farmers markets.

tbs624

As the poster above says, your first port of call should be the local Council

You'll also find lots of relevant info here : http://www.food.gov.uk/business-industry/caterers/startingup/#anchor_1

You will need to look at Public Liability Insurance too.

[Deleted User]

Unfortunately/ Fortunately? I don't agree with the first post. I think it's one of the easiest and low costs business start ups.

As both say above, the local Council will help and they may even meet with you to talk through the safe working procedures. In any case you can seek the data packs from the direct.gov websites, it's all the same.

Your main expenses will be

1. Equipment
2. Public & Product Liability Insurance

You just need to look at the system you will be using and how they will be safe for all, i.e. Wash basins and procedures for what's washed where and how. . .

If it helps my public liability just cost me £115 and that's for a mobile trailer, so I expect you could pay about 1/2 of that.

Good Luck - Sounds fun

Savvy_Sue

chemilyx wrote: »

I live in a tiny one bedroom flat and don't have much kitchen space.

Rented, or owned outright, or mortgaged?

You should get permission from your landlord / mortgage lender to run a business from home.

paulwf

I think it is the "up your income" board on MSE that gets regular threads on this subject and I'm sure there's a huge thread on this very subject somewhere over there.

Although I totally agree you should walk before you run it really would sense to do a business plan and consider what the next step is if your business does take off. You've highlighted that you have limited capacity so what will the next step be? There's no point spending time, money and effort building the business if you then hit a wall because you run out of capacity. This is especially important as the laws on gluten free labeling were tightened this year.

BTW a partnership local to me has been making vegan baked goods from home and selling at the local market for a couple of years and open their own shop next week. Gluten free is one of their specialities. It can be done so good luck!

chemilyx

Savvy_Sue wrote: »

Rented, or owned outright, or mortgaged?

You should get permission from your landlord / mortgage lender to run a business from home.

Oh god, I really have opened a can of worms here, haven't I? I can't believe all the stuff I've got to think of/ sort out if I really want to do this I rent through a housing association.

Thanks for all the advice so far, everyone. You've made it nice and simple too which is much appreciated

Based on what's been said I think the next step would be to contact the council. If I do plan to go ahead, I guess I might think about applying for some sort of grant (e.g. from the Prince's Trust).

The thing is, I don't want to faff around and set all this up and then find that I can't manage it (I have some health problems meaning I'm not working at the moment). I want to test the waters first and see how I get on... but it doesn't look as though I'd be able to do that without setting it all up beforehand! Nightmare.

That's another thing, actually... if I was registered as having started a business (which as I said, may or may not be feasible for me to maintain), would I have trouble claiming ESA? (presuming I didn't earn more than £20 a week).

Savvy_Sue

chemilyx wrote: »

Oh god, I really have opened a can of worms here, haven't I? I can't believe all the stuff I've got to think of/ sort out if I really want to do this I rent through a housing association.

Ah, that's possibly the best position to be in: if you read your tenancy agreement, there will almost certainly be a clause about not running a business from your home. However, if you ask permission, it shouldn't be refused unless there's a reason - for example, if you wanted to start a car repair business in the garage or on your drive, then that would almost certainly impact on your neighbours, so they'd refuse. Likewise if you were expecting multiple visitors to your flat.

It's possible that the smell of baking will be seen as a 'nuisance', but let's hope not ...

chemilyx wrote: »

Based on what's been said I think the next step would be to contact the council. If I do plan to go ahead, I guess I might think about applying for some sort of grant (e.g. from the Prince's Trust).

Well, you certainly need to find out if your flat is suitable, or not, for making food at home. Because if it's not, then you'd need to consider NOT working from home.

chemilyx wrote: »

That's another thing, actually... if I was registered as having started a business (which as I said, may or may not be feasible for me to maintain), would I have trouble claiming ESA? (presuming I didn't earn more than £20 a week).

You'd be registered as self-employed. Can't comment on your ESA claim, I'm afraid.

badmumof1

Council environmental health checks on a property are free. so long as you are not selling from your home you will not need any planning, licensing or whatever. you will need to seperate all you use for baking like ingredients from your every day bits in your kitchen. say stacker box for dried ingredients and again suitable labelled for fridge bits. you will need food hygiene cert but search online allsafe are good with that. public liability ins can be sought online but check you have product liability included.
Best of luck with it