Sugar and spice, and all things nice make more than just sweet-tasting baked goodies when you take up baking as a side hustle. If your friends and family enjoy your baking, you can expand your horizons and take your treats to the streets. You won’t actually have to stand in the street with a table filled with cakes, muffins, and what-have-you. With a little marketing and strategic advertising, you can find customers to order your goods or even supply treats to local corporate events.

Even if you’re not a professional baker or you didn’t get any formal training, baking is an easy side hustle to get into because you can follow the recipe and find YouTube videos to help you out if you get stuck somewhere. You’ll need to check if it’s legal in your area to sell home-baked goods as there are quite a number of laws and regulations surrounding food. In some cases, you may need to apply for a permit or license.

Who Is It For?
You don’t have to be a baking pro, but some level of skill is required to ensure that what you plan to sell is edible and pleasing to look at. A feast for the eyes is a feast for the tummy after all. Baking may require some investment with regards to time and baking tools.

Who Is It Not For?
If you have no idea what tsp. or tblsp. mean, you might want to scroll on to the next side hustle. Baking is an art of sorts, which requires time and patience so you can make sure everything comes out right and your customers remain satisfied. If you don’t have that kind of time, or the level of patience it takes to pipe flowers onto a whole cake, then this one’s not for you.

How It Works?
First and foremost, you need to hone your baking skills. Try out as many recipes as possible, get some taste-testers to give you some feedback on what you make and invest on some quality baking equipment and premium ingredients. You can even take some online classes or courses at a local culinary school to improve your skills or learn some new ones.

Once you’re sure of your skills, you can start searching for customers. The best way to start out and grow your bakerpreneur business is getting recommendations from people who’ve tried out your baked treats and loved them. You can make some goodies for a friend’s party or some social event and make sure to let everyone know where those tasty treats come from. Another good way to get the word out is by sharing photos of your baked products on social media. Make sure the products look good enough to entice someone to contact you right away and place an order.

You can focus on creating custom orders as they come in, which can keep you pretty busy if you can get some customers to get the ball rolling. Alternatively, you can talk to your local bakeries about supplying them with a few of your treats to sell in their store and split the profits with you.

What We Like?
You can do this from home with equipment you already own.
If you can’t buy baking equipment, you can usually substitute with other everyday utensils until you raise enough money to buy it.

What We Don’t Like?
Food is a tricky business as everyone has their own individual taste preferences and sometimes one customer might not like a treat that’s a favourite of many others.
It can be hard to get customers to start out.
Your profits are dependent on the number of orders you fill so you won’t have a steady earning potential.
Pricing your baked goods according to your expenses can result in an expensive price that won’t be practical for your customers, which may mean lower profits for you if you have to reduce your prices.

How Much Can You Make
You can determine what to charge by checking what other bakers are charging for similar products so that you can have a competitive price. The amount you earn depends on the number of orders you get and complete. Typically you can make between £200 and £400 per month on custom orders, but this number can go as high as £1000 if you get regular orders especially for wedding cakes which are generally more costly.

Conclusion:
For most people who love baking, it’s a sweet way to blow off steam and have something yummy to eat afterwards. By turning baking into a side hustle, you can earn money for doing something you love. People will always want to eat and enjoy sweet treats so you’ll hardly ever fail to find someone who wants to place an order, as long as you’re good at what you do.

Pros:
Skills can be learnt in a short time through online classes or from a local institution.
You have control of the number of orders you take and the hours you want to work to complete them.

Cons:
No steady income as demand for baked goods can fluctuate
In the long run, you have to invest in professional equipment and learn some skills in order to offer competitive products.