Opening a successful bakery requires making an investment in high-quality baking equipment that will help you complete your food preparation, baking, and serving tasks. Whether you are selling traditional-quality artisan bread, beautifully decorated cakes, or tasty pastries for a quick snack or to-go dessert, having the right kitchen equipment will go a long way in increasing the productivity, efficiency, and bottom line of your bakery.

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Bakery Ovens

Deck Ovens

Artisan bread, such as baguettes, ciabatta, and sourdough bread, are best made in deck ovens, which are designed primarily for them. Deck ovens are so named because they have a deck that is usually made of stone or ceramic where the food items are placed. Most deck ovens can have multiple decks, allowing you to bake more items without taking up too much floor space.

Deck ovens use two heating methods. The first is conductive heat, which is transferred directly from the deck to the dough. The second is radiant heat, which comes from the hot air in the baking chamber and penetrates the dough to cook it further.

The heating elements in a deck oven are placed at the top and bottom of the cavity. Each element can be controlled separately to give you the advantage of setting different top and bottom temperatures so that the bread cook evenly.  

Deck ovens sometimes have a steam injection system that releases water vapor into the cooking chamber. This is what’s responsible for the perfectly crisp, brown bread crusts covering a soft and fluffy inside.

Rack Ovens

Bakeries producing high volumes of bread, bagels, and pastries use a rack oven, or a revolving oven, which bakes food by revolving them around a central shaft above a heating element typically situated at the bottom of the baking chamber.  

A rack oven has several shelves, around 8 to 12, that are typically made of metal or stone where you can load your items. These shelves are connected to a central horizontal shaft. An external motor spins the shaft, which, in turn, moves the shelves around, like a Ferris wheel. The revolving motion of the shelves creates uniform baking.

Rack ovens have very high outputs but do require plenty of floor space in your kitchen. Since the first mechanical oven was invented in the 19th century, rack ovens have evolved to incorporate modern features that enhance the baking process, such as self-generating steam systems and adjustable heating elements. Some models even have convection systems that circulate pre-heated air into the cavity to further create even baking.

Conveyor Ovens

When you need to bake high volumes of the same baked good in the least amount of time and without the supervision of a trained chef, you need conveyor ovens in your bakery.

Conveyor ovens cook baked goods that are placed on conveyor belts, which move them through the baking chamber. The oven then creates jets of hot air of similar intensity and blows this air to the food. The force of the heated air allows it to easily break the barrier of cold air around the uncooked food, thus leading to faster cooking. And because the speed of the belt remains constant throughout the baking process, all items come out of the chamber similarly cooked as every other item.

Conveyor ovens are extremely easy to use. They have programmable controls that take care of the time and speed settings for you. You only have to place the items at the opening of the conveyor belt and wait for them to come out at the other end.

However, conveyor ovens cannot bake everything. The openings typically measure 3” to 5” in height, severely limiting the items you can bake to those not taller than the narrow opening. Cakes, bread, puff pastries, and other baked goods that need to rise or retain their moisture may also break down or dry out under the strong blasts of hot air.

Convection Ovens

Convection ovens have fans that circulate pre-heated air around the baking chamber. This creates uniform heat distribution that eliminates cold or hot spots. Food comes out cooked evenly in a convection oven. The inclusion of hot air circulating around the cavity also speeds up the cooking time by as much as 30%.  

The rapid cooking times, however, can be a drawback if you’re baking items that need time to rise. If the outside of a cake is cooked faster than it is done rising, the cake could come up with a bumpy, uneven texture on the inside.

Standard Ovens

Standard ovens are simple to use, operate, and maintain because they have the fewest moving parts. They are also the most affordable, making them attractive for small baking operations or restaurants that need to do some baking from time to time.

These ovens use radiant heat created by a stationary heating element typically situated at the bottom of the baking chamber. The heat is then distributed throughout the cavity to cook cakes, cookies, bread, bagels, and a variety of pastries.

Commercial Bakery Refrigerators

Reach-In Refrigerators

Almost all commercial kitchens have at least one reach-in refrigerator. This is a practical and versatile piece of equipment that can store a variety of items that need to be kept at low temperatures. Bakeries need a refrigerator for keeping things such as eggs, fresh fruits, milk, butter, and other dairy products cool and fresh.  

Reach-in refrigerators are available in a range of sizes to suit every kitchen’s specific storage needs. The smallest units typically run 26” wide with a single door opening up to a single section while the largest models can span 87” in width with up to three sections and three doors. All of them have similar depths that allow you to reach in at arm’s length for easy access to the contents.

Reach-ins range from basic refrigerated boxes to advanced units with high-tech features, such as temperature monitoring sent to your phone or computer via the cloud and smart diagnostic systems that look out for potential problems and automatically issue solutions before system failure happens.

Reach-in Freezers

While refrigerators can hold temperatures around 33° F to 41° F, freezers can go a lot lower to temperature ranges between -15° F to 0° F. This makes them suitable for storing finished baked goods that are prepared in advance and need to be kept frozen.  

Reach-in freezers are available in many configurations. The most common type of freezer is the upright cabinet, which is very similar to how the reach-in refrigerator looks. Upright freezers have multiple shelves that provide quick access to your frozen items.

Smaller bakeries that want to optimize the available space they have can opt for undercounter freezers, which can fit under most counters or kitchen stands. Some undercounter freezers have sturdy tops that double as an extra worktop. Other freezers are made of durable, insulated material so that they can serve as an equipment base for ovens and other cooking equipment.

High-volume bakeries may invest in bigger units, such as roll-in and walk-in freezers for bulk storage for long periods of time. These models are large enough to let you roll in entire oven racks straight into the freezer.

Worktop Refrigerators

Worktop refrigerators are another way to make the most of the space you have if you have limited real estate in your bakery’s kitchen. These are multi-functional units that have a refrigerated interior for storing ingredients and a sturdy worktop for preparing your food products.

The refrigerated interior can be accessed through doors, drawers, or a combination of both. Doors open up to a single section fitted with shelves, where you can store jugs of milk, boxes of butter, egg cartons, and other tall containers that otherwise wouldn’t fit inside the drawers. The latter is configured to accommodate 6”-deep pans.

Blast Chillers

Blast chillers lower the temperature of baked items at extremely quick rates. They work much faster than freezers and can bring food temperatures from 135° F down to 41° F in a mere hour and a half. This allows you to cool down baked goods quickly before storing them in the refrigerator or freezer.

Blast chillers usually have three chill cycles. The first is a soft chill designed for delicate products, such as chiffon and sponge cakes. Hard chill is used for bringing down the temperature of high-volume food items using a cold blast of air sweeping through the interior at high speeds. This cycle is effective for freezing dense, heavy, and fatty items, such as large chunks of meat and vats of soups and stews.

The third cycle is shock freeze, which blows cold air at temperatures of -40° F and below to freeze food items in less than four hours. Shock freeze is often used to stabilize the texture of ice creams, sorbets, and gelatos while preventing the formation of macro-crystals and air bubbles to keep a smooth, creamy consistency.

Commercial Bakery Mixers

Commercial Mixers

Commercial mixers are a must-have for bakeries. You will need at least one heavy-duty planetary mixer to prepare a multitude of food items, from glossy icings and fluffy frostings to cake batters, cookie doughs, and bread doughs.

Planetary mixers have a shaft to which an agitator is attached. The agitator rotates around a fixed mixing bowl, similar to how the planets rotate around the sun, giving this piece of equipment its name.

The versatility of planetary mixers lies in the various agitators that you can attach to the shaft. Most models come with three basic attachments:

• Whisk – for light mixtures like whipped creams, frostings, and meringue
• Beater – for medium mixtures like cake batters and cookie dough
• Dough Hook – for heavy mixtures like bread and pizza dough

Many planetary mixers have a power takeoff hub that can be used to attach other food preparation accessories, such as a meat grinder or vegetable shredder for making stuffed bread rolls. 

Dough Mixers

A dough mixer is a specialized type of food mixer that is designed primarily to prepare dense, heavy mixtures, such as bread and pizza dough. Unlike planetary mixers, dough mixers have a stationary shaft and a moving bowl that goes around the fixed agitator. The movement of the bowl allows for a more uniform distribution of the heavy dough.

Dough mixers typically only have one type of agitator: a spiral-shaped or S-shaped dough hook that folds in dough more gently than whisks or flat beaters. Some models include C-shaped or J-shaped hooks that let you add more ingredients without agitating the dough too much.

Dough Preparation Equipment for Bakery

Dough Sheeters

Manual dough rolling uses up a lot of muscle power and is expensive in terms of labor. Not only that, there’s also the risk of having dough coming out rolled into uneven thicknesses and textures. A dough sheeter takes care of all these problems as it creates smooth, uniformly rolled dough within minutes.

Dough sheeters have rollers that flatten the dough to the desired thickness. Some dough sheeters are one-stage models, where the dough is passed over a single roller for flattening. Other units have two rollers to provide a more thorough rolling. There are also reversible dough sheeters, where you can put the dough on a conveyor and move it through a set of rollers back and forth until you have achieved the desired thickness and consistency.

Some dough sheeters let you adjust the thickness of the rolled dough by widening or narrowing the gap between rollers. Other high-end models have features that allow for automatic flour dusting to prevent sticky, wet doughs, such as those used for ciabatta, from sticking to the rollers. Some even have the option of providing cutting attachments that quickly cut the dough to your desired shape, such as donuts, croissants, and themed cookies. 

Dough sheeters are useful for making dough for pie crusts, flatbreads, and croissants. You can also make cake fondant using a dough sheet as it eliminates all the kinks and folds that will inevitably show up on your finished product. These work much, much faster than manual labor and open up your time to work on other kitchen tasks while reducing the damage done to the gluten.   

Dough Dividers & Rounders

A dough divider is used to cut large volumes of dough at a time, effectively reducing the time you need to cut dough from half an hour to a few minutes. Dough dividers have a large press equipped with blades at the head of the machine. You simply place a piece of flattened dough on a reel plate that is inserted under the head and push down a hydraulic or mechanical lever that presses the blades to the dough. This creates equally cut small pieces of dough almost ready for baking.

Most dough dividers come with a built-in rounder that automatically forms the small pieces of dough into little round shapes. Specialty units can also turn them into squares, hexagons, or other shapes. Generally, divider/rounder units work by creating an oscillating motion that rapidly shapes the divided dough into small balls. You can control the amount of pressure and length of time of rounding to control the size of the rounded dough.

Holding/Proofing Cabinets

Breads, donuts, and croissants need to rise before they are put in the oven for baking. For this process, you’ll need proofing cabinets, which create the ideal environment for yeast to thrive and allow the dough to rise properly after it has been worked into its final shape.

Yeast cells start to die off at 140°F and grow less below 68° F. Proofing cabinets are designed to maintain temperatures between 75° F to 85° F, which is ideal for allowing the dough to rise properly. They also often have a water pan or a steam injection system, which is used to maintain a humidity level of 85%. The presence of water vapor in the air delays the cooking of the crust so that the dough can rise fully.

Bread Slicers

Bread slicers provide a fast, easy, and practical way to cut loaves of bread into several slices in a single swoop. Commercial slicers typically have sharp blades spaced out at standard dimensions. A lever on the side lets you lower the blades to the loaf, cutting it into equal sizes that can then be packed into a bread bag.

Bakery bread slicers can cut anywhere from a few to several hundred loaves an hour. Some units are equipped with bread baggers so you can easily pack the sliced loaves into bags to maintain their freshness. Bread slicers also come with crumb trays that collect crumbs for easy cleaning.

Commercial Food Processors for Bakeries

Food processors are essential for preparing large quantities of ingredients, such as ground meat and chopped vegetables for bread stuffing or pureed fruits for pie and tart fillings. With the right attachment, food processors can perform practically any preparation task, from making julienne cuts to crimping, pulping, and even preparing small batches of pie and pastry dough.

Food processors come in a batch bowl or continuous feed configurations. Batch bowl processors have a built-in bowl that supports a shaft where the blade or disc is attached to cut the food to the desired shape. The bowl can be easily removed to access the processed ingredients, thus requiring you to stop in the middle of operations.

For large-scale bakeries, using a continuous feed processor may be more productive since you don’t have to pause the food processor to retrieve the processed items. Instead, continuous feed units allow you to input food on one end while it dispenses processed food into a container at the other end.

Bakery Work Tables & Racks

Baker’s Tables

You need strong and sturdy tables to accomplish most of your baking tasks, from hand-rolling, kneading, and cutting dough to slicing, peeling, and chopping ingredients and decorating your cakes, pastries, and other baked goods.  

Kitchen tables come with heavy-duty stainless steel legs to hold up against daily use and abuse. Most tables have stainless steel tops to provide extra space for food prep work. Unlike wood, which is prone to chips and scratches, stainless steel is corrosion-resistant and protects your food items from exposure to rust. It has a smooth, polished surface that is easy to clean and sanitize.

Tables may also double as storage space with the addition of under-shelves, sliding drawers, and nesting racks that allow you to save space when the tables are not in use. You also have the option to use tables with lockable casters so you can easily wheel them around the workspace. Some tables have back-splash guards that protect the surrounding walls or equipment from food splatters.

Oven Racks

Oven racks are useful for holding large quantities of full-size and half-size sheet pans. Whether you need to put these in the refrigerator for a cooling, in the proofing cabinet for proofing, or in the oven for baking, oven racks let you move and process high volumes of food items at once.

Oven racks are made of metal, typically stainless steel or aluminum, to provide sufficient stability for holding several sheet pans at a time. Many units have heat-resistant casters that let you roll them in and out of the oven with ease. You may also want to include oven rack covers, which are usually made of plastic or polyester, to protect the rack from dust.  

Cake Supplies & Bakeshop Equipment

Non Refrigerated Display Cases for Bakery

Plenty of bakery staples are best kept in dry storage. Dry goods, such as flour, sugar, and salt can be placed securely in ingredient bins, which can easily accommodate up to several hundred pounds of content. You’ll also need food boxes that can store crackers, grains, and dried beans. Transparent boxes with matching lids allow you to check on the quality of your food items without having to open them. To keep large boxes and bags of ingredients off the floor without taking up too much space, you can use dunnage racks with legs or casters.

Bakery Refrigerated Display Cases

Display cases allow you to attract customers with mouthwatering displays of your food products while keeping the items at ideal holding temperatures. Bakery display cases can be refrigerated, non-refrigerated, or heated.

Refrigerated cases hold food at cool temperatures, making them perfect for displaying frosted items, such as cakes and cupcakes. These have low-velocity cooling systems to keep delicate cakes and baked goods from drying out. Bread and bagels, on the other hand, hold up just right in non-refrigerated cases. The transparent glass or acrylic covers provide protection against dust, debris, or excess moisture in the air that could affect the quality of your products. Heated displays hold food items at high temperatures to keep them warm right up to the moment of serving. They typically have glass defoggers so that customers can see inside.

Utility and Delivery Carts

When you need to move large bags and boxes of ingredients around the kitchen, having utility and delivery carts make the job easier. Kitchen carts are made with durable products and construction processes that allow them to carry hundreds of pounds of food items at a time. These usually have huge, heavy-duty casters that let you wheel them around as well as welded handles that you can expect to last for a long time. High-end units may also come with height-adjustable legs above the casters, which allow you to more easily transfer items from the cart to a tabletop height.

Commercial Bakery Sinks

Commercial Sinks

Bakeries need at least three sinks, one for washing ingredients, a second for hand-washing, and a third for cleaning pans, bakeware, and small equipment. Commercial sinks can have one or multiple compartments. Small, one-compartment, or two-compartment sinks are more suitable for food prep and hand-washing. Three-compartment sinks are typically used for rinsing, washing, and sanitizing bakeware.

Commercial sinks are normally made of stainless steel, a strong and hygienic material that is perfect for use inside the kitchen. Look for 304 stainless steel, which is corrosion-resistant and will not rust as easily as other types of stainless steel. Another thing to consider is the thickness of the material. 18 gauge stainless steel sinks are the thickest and are best for areas with poor-quality, hard water.  

Bakery Packaging Equipment

Sheet Pan Liners

Pan liners are used to make it easier to release items such as bread and cookies from the pan. They also shorten cleaning time because they eliminate the need for hard scrubbing to remove grease from the pan.

Some pan liners are designed for specific pan sizes and shapes, such as fluted loaf pan liners for baking pieces of bread and coffee cakes. However, the most common pan liner is parchment paper, a heat-proof and grease-resistant material that will not catch fire in the oven.

Parchment paper is different from waxed paper. The former is completely safe for oven use while the latter has a thin layer of wax on both sides. Wax is not oven-safe and will likely create smoke that will wreck the flavor of your baked goods.

Bakery Boxes

Bakery boxes are used for to-go orders of cakes, donuts, cupcakes, cookies, and all sorts of baked products. These are available in all sizes, colors, and themes and can be customized to include your logo and brand colors. They can go as big as to accommodate full sheet cakes of 18” x 26” and as small as to contain only one cookie or cupcake. If you’re offering full-size sheet cakes, your boxes must come with cake boards for extra stability to handle the bigger cakes.

Bakery boxes can be one-piece or two-piece with lids that can be removed to help customers easily access the product. They may also have transparent plastic windows that let you display your baked goods and handles that make them convenient to carry.

Paper Bags

Recyclable paper bags are used to contain to-go orders of pieces of bread, cookies, and other small pastries. These come in all sizes, such as long, narrow bags for baguettes, larger ones for entire loaves, and smaller bags for a handful of cookies.

The simplest, most affordable, and most flexible option is to use open-top brown bags, but you also have the choice to use paper bags with additional features. For instance, some bags have clear, plastic windows so that customers can look at what’s inside. Other bags can be re-closed using tin ties. Some bags are also made of specialty paper, such as paper bags with micro-perforations for keeping hot products and letting off steam and moisture that could make a crispy crust soggy.  

Bakeware: Baking Sets & Pans

You will need baking pans, mixing bowls, measuring cups, and a varied assortment of small kitchen tools to help you accomplish your baking tasks. A commercial bakery kitchen is not complete without the following items:

Ice & Drink Maker Machines for Professional Bakery

Professional Ice Makers

Serving drinks can help keep customers staying longer and spending more. If you’re going to serve drinks, you will need commercial ice machines for keeping your offerings cool and refreshing. For quick-serve and self-serve operations, you need to invest in an ice maker with a combined dispenser that allows staff or customers to get ice simply by pulling a lever or pushing a button.

Also, consider the type of ice you want to serve. Full-cube and half-cube ice are very common, but ice makers can also create other types of ice, such as nugget ice, which has become a favorite among customers for its ability to retain the flavor of whatever it is cooling.

Drink Dispensers

A drink dispenser is another useful piece of equipment to enhance your front-of-house service. This is used to dispense pre-made drinks, such as lemonade or iced tea. A refrigerated dispenser keeps your beverages cool without diluting the flavor with ice.

Dispensers have a tank or several tanks to contain drinks. The tank is often clear glass or acrylic to let staff and customers know what’s inside. If you are going to serve multiple drinks, it is best to purchase a dispenser with multiple tanks. You may also want to look for a dispenser with an agitator to continuously stir the drink and prevent it from separating or turning into slush.
  

Coffee Makers

Coffee can also encourage customers to stay longer. Bakeries that serve coffee need standard coffee brewers for making regular black coffee and an espresso machine or two for making that thick, flavorful, and intense drink that is used for plenty of espresso-based drinks, from flat whites to lattes and cappuccinos.

Of course, you also can’t go without a good grinder to grind your coffee beans right before they are loaded into the coffee maker. Look for flat burr grinders with circular burrs. These are more reliable than blade grinders and produce an even grind.

Cooking Equipment for Serving Hot Food Items

Panini Presses

A panini press also called a panini grill or a sandwich press is essential if you’re going to serve sandwiches at your bakery. A key consideration when looking for a panini press is the plate material. Some plates are made of lightweight aluminum for light to medium-duty use. These heat up quickly and are more affordable. However, cast iron plates are more trustworthy when it comes to durability and heating consistency. Although cast iron plates are harder to clean and need a lot of maintenance in the long run to prevent corrosion, they are less likely to succumb to damage than aluminum plates.

You may also want to look at the plate configuration of the panini press. Most plates are either smooth or grooved. Smooth plates are excellent at providing even cooking because the entire plate surface touches the food. Grooved plates, on the other hand, give you those good-looking grill marks that can make your sandwiches even more appealing.

Countertop Griddles

A countertop griddle is a flat cooking surface for cooking eggs, pancakes, burger patties, or other flat items to go with your baked goods. Having a countertop griddle in your bakery can help you accomplish cooking tasks that are otherwise difficult to do using ovens, such as cooking bacon for a bacon loaf or making sunny-side-up eggs for a breakfast tart.  

Most griddles have a stainless steel plate where the food is cooked. A cooking surface with chrome plating improves heat retention and prevents food from sticking, making it a breeze during cleanup. Also, consider the thickness of the plate. A griddle with a thicker plate heats up more slowly but retains heat more easily and produces more heating power for cooking a large number of items. If you’re cooking more delicate items, such as eggs, a thinner plate will more than suffice.

Commercial Dishwashers

Commercial dishwashers are essential for ensuring that you are using clean, sanitized pans, pots, dishes, utensils, and bakeware. Unlike home dishwashers, which usually take hours to complete a cycle, commercial dishwashers can clean a batch of items in a super-fast cycle that takes only a few minutes. Bakeries need tall, high-capacity dishwashers, such as door-type and conveyor-type units, which can accommodate several full-size sheet pans in a single cycle.

How to Start a Home Bakery Business in 2024: The Ultimate Guide!

Welcome to the Ultimate Guide on how to start your own Home Bakery Business!

If baking super delicious treats has captured your heart and you want to sell your yummy baking for profit, you’re totally in the right place 😊

This information comes from first-hand experience in 10+ years of professional home baking.

There wasn’t a guide like this available when I started my Home Bakery, and it was tremendously frustrating to figure everything out by myself.

But I’ve put together this super thorough guide so that YOU DON’T NEED TO FIGURE EVERYTHING OUT ON YOUR OWN. In this post, you’ll essentially get my roadmap for creating a side-hustle, part-time or full-time Home Bakery Business.

Because let’s face it; many people talk about how to START a Home Bakery. But no one really talks about how to make it your FULL-TIME career.

I’ll show you exactly how this process works, starting from zero all the way up to full-time home baking.

If you’re more of a VIDEO person, watch my YouTube video on How to Start a Home Bakery Business 🙂

In this post you’ll learn the 3 different phases of a Home Bakery and what you can do in each different phase to start or grow your own Home Bakery business.

RELATED: When are you READY to Start a Home Bakery?

If we haven’t met yet; hi! I’m Aurelia Lambrechts. I’ve been a full-time home baker in Cape Town, South Africa for 6+ years. Now it’s my mission to help flavour-obsessed home bakers like you create a Home Bakery with consistent orders so they never have to worry about a stable income.

If you want to become a confident & successful Home Bakery Business owner, I’m here to help you make it happen!

Please note: This post has affiliate links. This means that if you purchase some of these products I get a tiny commission – but at NO extra cost to you. I’m super proud to recommend these resources to you because they’ve completely transformed my Home Bakery Business!

Before I get to the 3 Phases of Starting a full-time Home Bakery, here’s the most important thing you need to know…

 

Understand that Building up a Home Bakery Business is a GRADUAL Process

There’s a HUGE misconception among Home Bakers today! They often seem to think; “I need to leave my day job TODAY so I can start my home bakery TOMORROW!”

This misconception leads to 2 different responses which are both wrong.

A] You’ll be filled with dread and fear. You might be wondering: “HOW am I going to do this? What’s going to happen to my finances? How’s my family going to survive?!”

B] Then, on the other hand, you get people who react in ignorance and blind optimism. In which case you might be thinking: “Yes! Let’s do this! I am going to make heaps of money in no time. My baking is delicious, I just need some quick sales tips and tricks. Two weeks from now, I’m going to have a full-time bakery!”

This is NOT how a Home Bakery works. If anyone has been telling you a Home Bakery will make you rich in a few weeks, they’re totally lying.

You absolutely CAN make a good living from Home Baking, but it doesn’t happen in a few weeks.

But know right now that you don’t need to be filled with fear as in point A above. And you also need to understand that a full-time Home Bakery isn’t an “overnight success path” as in point B.

NEITHER ONE OF THESE RESPONSES ARE RIGHT.

Here’s the TRUTH you need to know about starting a Home Bakery Business:

1. First of all, the journey to a full-time home bakery is very SAFE. You’re not going to be putting your family at risk financially. The journey to a successful business isn’t reckless or spontaneous.
2. Home bakery success does not happen by accident. It’s planned. It’s very strategic. You apply specific strategies to get results and reach success. You don’t just bake delicious things, post them on social media, “hope for the best”, and then it works out. That’s not how it works.
3. The journey to a full-time home bakery is very GRADUAL. You’ll never be diving into the deep end and suddenly have to make things work, and if you make one mistake then it’s all over. Gosh, no! That’s way too much pressure and certainly no way to build a successful business.

This process can and should be sustainable. You can start and grow your baking business extremely gradually. You can even stretch out the process from starting your home bakery to baking full time over a year (or more) if you want to.

Because the beauty of a Home Bakery is that YOU are your own boss! This means YOU can control the pace at which you grow.

That’s why a Home Baking Business is such a fantastic business model. It’s ideal for moms. It’s ideal for wives and husbands. A Home Bakery is perfect for people who want to stay home and be there with their kids.

All because it’s a gradual and safe process that you can plan around YOUR unique lifestyle and responsibilities.

I asked my Home Bakery Pro students if they experienced the journey to full-time home baking as a safe, planned, and gradual process. Here’s what Angie Watts from Glow Life Foodie had to say.

I’ve also been in positions where I was sick, or my husband & family needed my help with something. And because I’m my own boss I could take a week off from work.

As Angie says, “you’re the driver of your business so you get to decide how fast or slow you go”.

That’s the reality of a home bakery business. It’s not overnight, all-of-a-sudden, “full time home baking in two weeks – here we go!”. That’s not how it works. Starting a Home Bakery Business is gradual, safe and planned.

Growing a home bakery is very much like growing a plant from a seed. It starts very small but as you nurture it, it grows into something amazing.

You start with good soil in a flower pot and you plant a seed in it (phase 1). Then it grows to fill the pot (phase 2). And only then do you plant it into the large garden bed (phase 3). It’s a very nurtured, gradual process of growth that happens one step at a time.

Additional reading:
Demand for Gypsum Mining and Wallboard Manufacturing ...
How to Start a Dog Food Business: 10 Tips & Tricks
Questions You Should Know about Laser Air Compressor

If you want to learn more, please visit our website QinLi.

 

Now that we’ve covered this super important point, you’re ready for the next part of this post…

The 3 DIFFERENT PHASES of starting a Home Bakery Business – from starting at zero, all the way up to full-time home baking.

In this post you’re essentially getting my secret Home Bakery Business Roadmap!

You can also join my Free Resource Library to get a clear, condensed illustration of this Roadmap (if you want to skip all the detail in this post).

PHASE 1:

STARTING OUT (You’re just starting or you haven’t started yet)

HERE’S WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE:

You start by baking for the people you know. That’s how every single business starts.

You start by baking for friends, family, and acquaintances for weekends.

(If you live in a town/city where you don’t know anyone or none of your family & friends will support your business, then you can look into supplying baked goods to a coffee shop / restaurant. If baking wholesale is against the law where you live, then you can look into baking for a local B&B or hotel. Or you can even look into hosting decorating/baking classes at home! Most municipalities don’t have a problem with this at all!)

That’s how you start. This way you don’t have to leave your job before you can start! You start your Home Bakery as a Side-Hustle.

This is the way I started as well when I was still working in architecture. I would bake every Thursday night after work. I literally started by baking one batch of cupcakes.

Over time it gradually grew to about ninety items every Thursday & Friday night for clients. 180 items per weekend were my weekly limit when I still had a desk job.

During this “Side-Hustle period” you can start saving up the profit you’re making to use in the future for expenses.

You don’t need to have it “all figured out before” you can start your Home Bakery Business.

You can do this after hours one night per week to start with. That’s how a home bakery starts. You don’t necessarily need to rent a commercial kitchen space just yet. You can start very, very small with what you have.

SOME PRACTICAL TIPS:

A] You’ll need to get a certificate from the Health Department in order to bake legally at your Home. You can read this blog post to help you with that >> Home Bakery Certificates, Licenses, and Insurance.

B] Filling out the free Home Bakery Business Plan workbook will help to give you clarity about your new business! In the workbook you’ll get lots of important questions you might not be thinking of yet. Join the free Resource Library to download the Business Plan Template.

C] You need to choose a great business name that stands out from your competition and attracts customers. This video post can help you >> Home Bakery business NAME mistakes to avoid + what to name your business so you attract customers.

D] You’ll need to price your bakes correctly and I’ve got just the blog post to help you with that >> 6 Steps to Pricing Your Baked Goods with Confidence.

 

WHAT YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON TO GROW TO THE NEXT LEVEL:

1. During this phase you really want to focus on getting your baked goods even more delicious. Improving the quality of your baking is very important in this first phase. Focus on improving your baking skills.

I’ve got 2 guides for you in the Free Resource Library to help you improve the quality your baking:

“How to grow your baking skills for free” AND “5 Weekly Habits to become a Better Baker”.

Join the Free Resource Library to get these free guides today.

Stretch and challenge yourself to bake new things that you’ve always want to bake. Research recipes and baking techniques. Read a lot of blogs and watch YouTube videos about baking.

So, before you bake a cheesecake for example, don’t just get any recipe and dive in! The chances of a failed bake are HUGE if you don’t research!

Home bakers often ask me how I can afford to practice my baking. But the KEY here is that you don’t practice with ingredients. You practice with RESEARCH. That’s how you improve your baking without wasting ingredients and money.

Before I baked my first cheesecake, I watched every single video on YouTube about baking cheesecake so I didn’t risk having a flop and wasting expensive ingredients.

I read every single blog post and watched every single YouTube video I could find on baking cheesecake before I baked my first one. And as a result, the first cheesecake I made was already good enough to sell.

So, before you bake ANYTHING, research it as thoroughly as possible. That’s how you make your learning process economical.

 

2. In this phase you can also START an Instagram account and a Facebook page. BUT (super important) don’t spend a lot of time on social media yet!!

I see this all the time with new home bakers. They think; “if I just create an Instagram account or a Facebook page then I’m suddenly going to get a lot of orders and then life is going to be perfect.”

That’s not how it works. Just posting baked goods on social media and hoping to get sales does NOT work.

Instagram and Facebook are great platforms but they are also platforms that need to be used STRATEGICALLY. Social media is just a lifeless tool. It’s what you DO with it that matters!

Later in your Home Bakery journey, social media can be amazing for your business. But it’s not worth your time to spend all your time on Instagram and on Facebook when you’re just starting your Home Bakery.

Don’t focus on getting likes and feeling popular on social media during phase 1.

Rather focus on improving the quality of your baked goods. And also focus on the relationships that you’re building with the people you’re selling your bakes to.

 

3. In your home bakery journey you’re going to go through A LOT of trial & error to get consistent sales and success. This is normal!

But, if you want to skip 4 years of trial & error (because that’s how long it typically takes to really get a thorough grip on CONSISTENT Home Bakery sales),
and you want precise systems and strategies to get you weekly sales,
and if you’re tired of worrying where your next sale is coming from…

Then my free Home Bakery Masterclass is perfect for you >> Register here.

If you want to do this all by yourself, that’s fine too! Just know the DIY route is going to take MUCH longer. Be patient with yourself and your learning process!

 

PHASE 2:

PART-TIME BAKING

HERE’S WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE:

In this phase your client base has grown a lot since phase 1. Your weekend, side-hustle home bakery is fully booked. You started baking one batch of something for Fridays. Eventually it will become two batches, three batches, four batches until you’re fully booked for Fridays.

Then you’ll start baking for Saturdays as well.

SOME PRACTICAL TIPS:

A] While you’re still working full-time at your day job, don’t bake more than 2 evenings per week. If you do more, it’s going to start putting a lot of pressure on your family life. Baking every single night of the week after work is not sustainable. Two nights per week maximum, okay? Don’t put your family under unnecessary pressure and don’t wear yourself out.

B] In this phase it’s crucial that you price your baked goods properly. Because if you undercharge, you’re not going to make enough profit and you won’t be able to grow your business.

RELATED: 6 Steps to Pricing Your Baked Goods with Confidence.

C] If you want to scale your side-hustle home bakery to a legit part-time business, you’ll need to DEFINE A NICHE. This means you specialize in solving a specific problem for clients. If you “bake anything for any occasion” you’ll get lost in the crowd. Defining a niche for your Home Bakery is the ONLY way to stand out!

Lucky for you there’s a guide in the Free Resource Library called “How to Find the Perfect Niche for Your Home Bakery“. Join the Free Resource Library now to get the free guide.

So, now that your weekends are fully booked, it’s time to grow.

 

WHAT YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON TO GROW TO THE NEXT LEVEL:

1. The reality is, you can’t progress to a part-time home bakery AND have a full-time day job. That’s impossible. You’re going to burn out. Your family is going to suffer. You are going to suffer. It just doesn’t work.

To progress to a part-time Home Bakery, you’ll need to scale down your day job to a part-time position.

It’s crucial that you don’t make this move too early!

Every weekend in your Home Bakery should be fully booked for at least two months and then you know that it’s safe to progress to a part-time Home Bakery.

Move over to a part time day job so that you free up more time for your baking. But note that this part-time day job won’t necessarily be in the same line of work you’re in right now.

You may need to compromise and take a part-time day job that isn’t necessarily your first choice. But remember that this change is a means to an end because you have a vision of your future and your home bakery that you are building.

To make that happen, you need to scale down to a part-time day job. So, that might mean reception work for someone or freelance work. Use whatever skills you have to get a part-time job.

You’re doing this so you still have stable income from a day job, but also have more time available to grow your home bakery. If you don’t make that space of time available, your home baking won’t be able to GROW to fill it up.

It’s like digging an extension to a dam in advance so that you can catch more rain in the future.

This change to a part-time job does come down to a bit of a leap of faith. You can’t have a full-time day job AND a full-time Home Bakery Business at the same time!

As you let go of your past reality you can start grabbing onto your future. You can’t hold onto your past and hold onto your future at the same time. You’ll to get torn to pieces!

So, at some point, you need to start letting go of your current reality so that you can grab hold of the future success that you want.

2. If you’ve scaled down to a part-time day job, you’ve now got more time for baking.

Now you can start looking out for a couple of wholesale clients. The benefits of wholesale clients are VAST! But the best one is probably that you only need ONE wholesale client to make HUNDREDS of sales.

From a marketing perspective; wholesale clients are so much less effort than direct clients! Because then sales no longer depend on YOUR effort.

With wholesale clients, the sales depend on THEIR effort. They make a profit from your bakes AND you’re just raking in more sales and profit from their effort. It’s awesome!

But you don’t have to bake for wholesale clients if you don’t want to.

Regardless, you always need to continue to grow your direct client base. Always focus on growing the relationships with your direct clients. Focus on giving them great products and great quality service.

And most importantly; connect with your direct clients as people.

Because remember, home baking is a very relational thing. It’s something that our mothers and grandmothers did for us. It’s a very family-orientated thing.

Relationships are so KEY to building a successful home bakery.

RELATED: 6 Easy Steps to Deal with Difficult/Dissatisfied Home Bakery Clients.

 

3. The next thing you can focus on in phase 2 is to learn beginner marketing strategies and skills.

It’s vital for your success that you learn marketing skills and business skills.

Home bakers often ask me; “how do I get more clients and sales?” I understand WHY they ask this because who doesn’t want heaps of clients and sales?!

But if you take away ONLY ONE THING from this blog post, let it be this…

A Home Bakery isn’t as simple as just baking high-quality things, getting a few “quick sales tips and tricks” and then everything works out. That’s not how a Home Bakery Business works.

A successful Home Bakery is planned. Success comes from strategy.

If you want to start a successful Home Bakery Business, you need to understand how clients THINK and WHY they buy things!

Let me give you a silly, but effective example. I was actually looking at my cat as she was busy drinking water.

She WANTS water. She knows she needs it. But if I pick her up and hold her close to the water and tell her; “Drink Kitty! Drink the water” She undoubtedly WILL scramble and run away – even though she wants that water.

Even though she’s thirsty she won’t bow to what I’m asking her to do. If I forcefully hold her there and ask her to drink the water, she’s going to just have the opposite reaction and run away.

And that’s what we often do with our clients. We bake something really tasty (that they actually do want) but we use terrible sales techniques that send them running away.

Here’s one example of these “terrible sales techniques” I’m speaking of: we just post something on Instagram and expect people to jump and order.

But asking people to buy your stuff without any kind of strategy or understanding is like forcefully holding them up to a bucket and saying; “drink clients, drink!”

And it doesn’t work.

“Quick sales tips and tricks” aren’t going to give you a successful business. They might give you a few sales but they won’t give you a successful business. Do you understand the difference?

A few quick sales are not the same thing as a sustainably, consistently successful home bakery business. They are two different things.

So, it’s unavoidable; if you want to build a successful Home Bakery Business, you’re going to need to learn how to think like a business owner.

You’re going to need to grow as an entrepreneur. You’re going to need to learn marketing skills. And the great news is that anyone can learn these things! I honestly mean that!

RELATED: The 4 Essentials of Home Bakery Marketing.

Doctors need to learn all kinds of skills to practice medicine.
Lawyers need to learn all kinds of skills to practice law.
Chefs need to go through chef school to learn all kinds of skills to be a chef in a restaurant.

And in the same way, if you want to be a home bakery business owner, you need to learn business and marketing skills.

Be open to learning those things. If you just keep baking delicious things and hoping for the best, you’re constantly going to struggle to get clients.

You will get SOME sales based on talent and recipe quality alone. But you’ll struggle to build a CONSISTENTLY successful business that you can scale into a part-time or full-time one.

 

4. During phase 2 you definitely need to create a website as well.

This is where you’re really going to start getting more sales.

I know it seems daunting to create a website for your Home Bakery, but it’s actually very simple! You can seriously create a website in one afternoon. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It’s actually very simple and easy to create a website on Wix – just use one of their drag-and-drop templates. SUPER easy.

Don’t put this off, okay? You must create a website for your Home Bakery in phase 2. Simply because a website communicates to people that you take your business seriously.

If you don’t have a website, they’ll assume that you’re just baking as a hobby. If you just have an Instagram page and a Facebook page, they’ll assume that you’re just baking casually and that it isn’t necessarily a business.

But when you have a website, you’re telling people you take yourself AND their needs seriously.

With a website it’s also becomes possible for people to order online from you. People live online nowadays so you need to be online to reach them. That’s a simple fact of 21st-century century business.

 

5. In phase 2 you also need to start paying more attention to your photography.

If baked goods don’t look delicious on a photo it’s tough for people to imagine themselves eating it. It’s tough for them to believe that it’s delicious if it doesn’t look delicious on the photo.

You can get some Photography tips for free on my Instagram “Photo Tips” story highlights and if you want my step-by-step system for taking drool-worthy photos of your baking, check out my course Irresistible Photography 😊

PHASE 3:

FULL-TIME BAKING

HERE’S WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE:

You have a consistent income every week that you can depend on and now you can just make that income MORE.

At this point when you are fully booked as a part-time baker. You’ve maybe got 1 or 2 wholesale clients and/or a direct client base that keeps you busy.

You essentially have a part-time day job and a part-time Home Bakery Business.

Pay attention to when that part-time baking is filled up completely for at least three months. Then you can start to move on to a full-time baking job and leave your day job for an employer altogether.

This is a scary step. I get it. But, at the same time it’s exactly the same as in phase two where you have to let go of your current reality to start embracing your future success. It comes down to the same thing.

It’s still a very safe and gradual process as you can see. You don’t drop everything immediately to bake full time and suddenly make a full salary from your baking.

Starting a Home Bakery is gradual – but as with anything NEW, there are still small steps of faith involved.

But please note that you can save up for this phase if you’re scared your finances might suffer. If you’re worried that you won’t have enough money to make a full salary when you start baking full time, save up the money you make in phase 2 of part time baking.

 

WHAT YOU NEED TO FOCUS ON TO GROW TO THE NEXT LEVEL:

1. The most important thing to focus on in phase 3 is giving your clients an AMAZING experience with you.

This is where you really need to understand what creates client loyalty.

Clients nowadays have a whole array of businesses to choose from. If you don’t know how to cultivate loyalty with your customers, they might move on to another baker.

That’s not the end of the world, you can always get more clients. But you need to understand how your clients think and what turns them into loyal customers, so research that online or in books.

I highly recommend the book “Superfans” by Pat Flynn!

 

2. In phase 3 you really need to ace your marketing game.

You need to know about copywriting. Copywriting is just a fancy word for all the writing you do in your business. This includes the words that you use on your website, words in your e-mails, words you use on social media, etc.

As a business owner, you need to understand how to get through to your clients.
You need to understand completely how they think.
You need to understand what makes them buy,
what attracts them to a business, and
what puts them off.

All of that comes down to marketing.

Fortunately, marketing isn’t a skill you’re “born with” or not. Anyone can learn how to be great at marketing! Read my post about Home Bakery Marketing.

There are also loads of books out there you can learn from. You don’t have to necessarily take an online course to learn these things. You can bootstrap and do it yourself.

RELATED: 7 Books every Home Bakery owner needs to read.

The perk of my Home Bakery Business courses is that I’ve read through all of those books. I’ve applied those theories to my home bakery business and tested them.

I’ve learned in my eight years of home baking that a home bakery is a very unique type of business. So, that’s the advantage of doing my courses; I give you the strategies that actually work so you don’t have to go through all of that trial and error yourself.

If you want to learn the exact system that got my Home Bakery fully booked for 3 months in advance, then my Home Bakery Masterclass is perfect for you! You can register for my free Masterclass here.

If you read books and apply what you learn, you CAN do it all by yourself. But it’ll probably take about 3-4 years of trial and error to refine the strategies you learn in books. It takes time before you actually figure out how to generate consistent income in your Home Bakery.

 

3. You need to optimize your website to rank high on Google.

This is so important because you need a consistent stream of new clients coming into your business.

Consistent sales come down to two things:

A] Your current clients are loyal. They stick with you and buy from you over and over again.

B] You also have a steady stream of new clients coming in and Google is the best way to do that. Getting new clients from Google has revolutionized my business.

But you can’t just create a website and then hope that people find you on Google.

There are all kinds of specific strategies you need to use. They call it SEO which stands for “search engine optimization.”

This just refers to the things that you do to make Google like you so that they’ll recommend you to people when they search for bakers in your town/city.

You can do things with your website on the back-end and on Google so that when people search for baked goods in your area, you’re the first one to pop up. You can seriously do this without paying a cent for advertising!

And then when people click through to your website, you say exactly the right things to make them understand that you are the baker need.

Then they click and order from you. If you can get this right, you’ll never need to worry about getting new clients again.

RELATED: How to Promote Your Home Bakery Business & Get More Exposure.

 

4. You need to build a strong brand.

Now, a brand is often a very elusive thing. People often think a brand is just your logo, colours, fonts, business cards, etc. (I used to think this too!)

But all that stuff is NOT your brand. Those things are PART of your brand, but it’s actually just branding DESIGN. It’s just one leg of your brand.

Yes, of course, your branding design needs to be beautiful. You need to have a beautiful website, and beautiful food photography that draws people in. All of that MATTERS.

But your brand is MORE than just the graphics of your Home Bakery Business.

Your brand is actually WHAT YOUR CLIENTS THINK & FEEL about your business. So, that goes WAY beyond a “pretty logo”.

A brand is about the message that your business is putting out there. It’s about what your home bakery stands for. It’s the vision that you have, the beliefs that you have, the principles that you have in your home bakery. These are the things that make up a strong brand.

And the words that you say (copywriting) are a massive part of this.

You need to have the right words on your website, e-mails, Facebook posts, etc.

You need to understand how to communicate effectively with your clients so that they know your baking is the solution to their problems.

Phew! Congrats for making it this far!

Let’s do a quick recap of what you’ve learned today.

# To start and grow a home bakery business is a safe and gradual process. You start small with one batch of bakes. Then you build your business up very gradually so you’re always getting an income. Your family will never be at risk. Your finances will never be at risk because you’re always getting an income.

# Note that you don’t need a flawless website and epic marketing before you can START selling your home baking! You only need to start learning about marketing & website building in phase 2.

# You can absolutely start selling now already. The beauty of a Home Bakery is that you can earn money from your baking while you learn business & marketing skills in the background.

# Good news is; anyone can learn marketing skills! You can do that though studying business & marketing books and testing out their strategies. Or you can read this blog post to get proven Home Bakery Business marketing strategies >> The 4 Essentials of Home Bakery Marketing.

 

Download the Home Bakery Business Roadmap

We covered quite a lot in this post so I’m sure it’ll feel a bit overwhelming!

To make your life a bit easier, I’ve created a short & sweet Roadmap for you to remind you of what you’ve learned today.

>> You can get the Home Bakery Business Roadmap for free when you join the Free Resource Library.

Thanks for reading! It was great to have you here.

If you’re confused about anything, let me know in the comments below. I love helping home bakers and seeing them just reach success faster. Let’s start and grow your home bakery business together!

Chat soon

Aurelia 🙂

If you want to learn more, please visit our website Bakery Production Line.