Home Baking Business | The Fresh Loaf

Hi,

I'm currently doing lots of research into starting a platform to allow home bakers to sell what they make online.

What do you think of the idea?

Are you currently selling your treats? What kind of challenges have you run into?

Look forward to everyone's ideas!

is that, since it doesn't have the 30 various chemicals used to keep commercial bread fresh, it stales way too quickly to be shipped and it costs way too much to ship as well.

great, thank you for your reply brown man.

What if it didn't have to be shipped? What if it could be cookies and cakes as well? Does that change things?

have it arrive looking like a cake? Same problems with cookies and cakes whe it comes to being stale and shipping costs.

I was in the food distribution business and shipped par baked breads, pastries and fully baked cookies and cakes every day. They were frozen solid and kept that way till they arrived at the retail store and still cakes were difficult to keep intact.

I wouldn't use such a platform. I love my customers and when they come to pick up their bread (or come to the little shop on Saturdays) we chat about all kinds of things. It's my way of connecting with my community. And I love to show people the bread so we can both admire it and say "Isn't it beautiful?". If I baked it and shipped it away, I would completely lose that connection and satisfaction and it would become just a commodity. Not for me...

beautiful, thank you for your response.

customer connection and the ability to show in person are important.

I think you forgot to check into the laws that regulate home bakers. Every state is different and those that do allow it have different rules (even among cities and counties). Most of them do not allow a third party to be involved (no internet sales), no wholesales, no selling across state lines, etc. So before you try to do what Uber is doing, please be aware of the actual regulations involved. Search for Food Cottage Laws in "insert state here." Here is one for my state: https://www.freshfromflorida.com/content/download/10223/137606/CottageFoodAdvisoryWithFormNumber.pdf Please note that Miami/Dade county do prohibit home bakers even though FL law says you can. The regulating body for this is the Department of Agriculture. You could look into an app similar to Cake Boss, but maybe more custom for the bread market-type vendors?

hi sugarowl,

thank you for your guidance.

I would use something that made it easy to run bread subscriptions (monthly, 3 months, 6 months, yearly).

Ideally, I'd have a set number of loaves and varieties and people would sign up and make payment arrangements for what is available (with options to vary the breads they get). Creating the online interface and then having the data populate a flexible spreadsheet/database would be great.