Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
Make money by selling cakes, jams and sweets at local car boot sales, markets and even shops. If everyone loves your homemade sweet treats it’s likely that you could make money from them!
Take a look at our guide to making and selling your delicious creations below, and see some of the great comments from readers too. They’ve left some helpful tips and links for you!
The beautiful thing about earning by baking is that it’s straightforward and flexible. It isn’t something that you necessarily have to do regularly – if you’re a little short of cash one week, it’s easy enough to hunt down your next local car boot sale and get baking. All you’ll really need is to have a good few recipes under your belt and a reasonable idea of what people would buy.
You don’t have to be qualified for this, but 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 at LearnDirect. The Food Standards Agency has also got some useful information on starting up a food business if you decide that baking is the business for you.
Here’s our foolproof six-step guide to help you make money selling cakes, jams and sweets:
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 that make money selling cakes or other 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 and sweets 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 make sure you keep on the right side of the law. Legislation says that all food businesses must register their kitchens with their local authority unless they operate on a “casual and limited” basis only.
If you’re simply selling cakes 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 doing this regularly, contact your local council and ask them what the rules are. If you do have to register your kitchen, it’s totally free to do so.
Be aware that if you want to make money selling cakes or other food produce regularly, the FSA has a range of free information on its web site to ensure you can do this safely and stay on the right side of the law. There‘s plenty of good hygiene advice too on the NHS Choices web site.
If you want to make money selling cakes and other produce, you need to do some basic costings.
It doesn’t have to be complicated. You’ll need to take into consideration:
Once you’ve worked out how much all of this is likely to cost you, you should be able to work out how much you’ll need to sell your cakes, sweets and jams for to break even and then make a profit.
While you do your research, you should be taking note of other stallholders who make money selling cakes and foods, to get a rough idea of how much you can reasonably expect to charge.
If you have to price your products extortionately just to make a profit, 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.
Once you’ve got a good idea of the kind of people you’re going to make money selling cakes 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 you to make money selling cakes, you need to try out different methods, ingredients, flavours, and fillings. With sweets test out different recipes. You could try focusing on one area, like chocolate, fudge, or maybe even health food!
Get your friends and family to try all your samples out and find out which are the most popular choices. They’ll likely be more than willing to help!
It’s worth knowing that at farmers’ markets, you’re not likely to make money selling cakes unless you use local, organic ingredients. People who 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 is 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. Remember that people are usually willing to pay for high quality.
Before you decide to make a real go of this, it’s advisable to give it a few test runs somewhere that isn’t going to cost you the earth.
Try out a stall at a car boot sale first, because it will only cost you between £5 and £15 to set up there. You can find your nearest car boot sale on Carbootjunction.
For more information on car boot sales you can read our full guide here.
Once you’re 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 make money selling cakes or other goods, 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, all you need is 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 and make money selling cakes, you need to find one local to you. You can do this by searching the Local Foods 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.
Presentation is important, particularly if you sell at an upmarket venue. Consider your customers: are they going to want something ‘cheap and cheerful’, or posh-looking homemade produce? Funnily enough, some of the more expensive jams and cakes have ‘the rustic look’: you could find yourself charging a lot for produce which looks especially homely!
Packaging can affect your sales in a big way. Ribbon is cheap if you buy in bulk from a haberdashery store, and can neaten up any edges around your cakes. If you want to make money selling cakes and jams, it’s worth getting some fancy labels printed, or spending some time decorating your own. You could experiment with themed packaging around holidays like Easter and Christmas, and for days like Valentine’s Day and Hallowe’en.
Whatever you 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.
A simple way to get some repeat business is to get some business cards printed off.
If you’re making cakes, you could then 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.
Hi everyone, we’ve just launched sellmycakes an easier way to get your cakes online.
Our self service websites make it easy for you to showcase your cakes and accept payments via card & PayPal.
There are no one off fees or monthly subscriptions, we only take a commission on the orders that are placed via our system. Our system gives you an online diary and tools to manage your online presence so you can concentrate on baking cakes, we deal with the techy stuff for you.
Hi Jasmine, I just stumbled across your post whilst doing some research. Full disclosure first – I am the Customer Success Champion from Baking It. Our website may be of interest to you in relation to this article. We have just launched a software platform that aids in the running of any type of bakery business. One of the great features of our site is that we work alongside your business. When you create your profile you set your country, time zone, you select the units of measurement you prefer to work in. We have created a platform that works… Read more »
I am starting a baking business and I am interested in your website and business plans.
Please would you send me information about them?
Thanks you!
Green
I m intrested in your business plan for confectionay products
Hi,
Like others here, I’d be very interested in a copy of your business plan if it’s still available.
Kevin
Hello
If it’s still available I’d like a copy of your business plan please [email protected]
Thanks
Thank you for posting this article. I find it very helpful. Can I please have a copy if your business plan ? Many thanks
Sana
[email protected]
Hi – I realise this is an old post but is there any possibility that I can still register my interest with this Brazilian company who might be interested in my cakes please? Thank you
Hi Elizabeth. So sorry, we should have taken that sentence out rather than just taking the link out. As you say that part is old (it’s from last year) and that particular opportunity has gone. I’ve removed the sentence. However, it’s worth keeping an eye out as British jams and pickles do sell well in many countries.
Hi Rob,
This is a great article.
I am also interested in having a copy of your business plan please. my email address is [email protected]
Thank you :}
Hi, please could you send me a copy of your business plan.
Many thanks
Joe
May I also get a copy of your business plan please?