Have you ever thought about selling baked goods online?
If you love to bake, selling baked goods online can be a creative and fulfilling side hustle. Sweeten all of life’s celebrations with your delicious desserts baked right in your very own home kitchen.
Selling baked goods online doesn’t have to be a complicated business to start at home. At Airmart, we have empowered dozens of hobby bakers to sell baked goods from home with our online shop platform:
- Kei’s Specialties started as a teen’s pandemic hobby and became a full home business for the whole family!
- Mochee LA was launched by a husband-and-wife team and has been featured on Eater LA!
- Honolulu Rose Cakeshop started as a home bakery on Airmart but will soon have a brick-and-mortar shop!
Join these bakers and turn your passion for pastries into a home bakery business. Here’s everything you need to know before selling baked goods online.
Selling baked goods online
Choose what to bake
Cookies, cupcakes, tarts, cakes, macarons, and bars, oh my!
The first step to starting a home bakery is to decide what you want to offer. Which baked good are you famous for among friends and family? What do you love baking the most? What is your favorite ingredient? For example, ube is the star ingredient at many Airmart bakeries and several have built their entire menus around it.
Choosing a specialty can help your bakery stand out from the crowd.
Here are some examples from Airmart shops:
- Naka is the only Afro Patisserie in the Bay Area, serving gorgeous cupcakes in gourmet African flavors.
- Crumble & Whisk: While Crumble & Whisk is famous for their cheesecakes, they also make savory pot pies and a small selection of single-serving baked foods.
- Baby Bear Baker Co.: At Baby Bear, Mimi crafts Fatcarons, a super-sized version of the ever-popular macaron.
Define your brand
What sets you apart from other cupcake bakers in town? What niche does your bakery fill? Why are your ingredients so special?
Maybe you use a family cookie recipe that has been passed down through generations, or you make an exotic dessert that isn’t often sold in your area. Or perhaps you have a unique twist on a traditional favorite. Knowing what sets you apart is key to making a competitive, sustainable home bakery business.
These Airmart bakeries are branding rockstars:
Mochee LA: This bakery sells mochi everything: mochi egg tarts, mochi brulee, mochi jelly, you name it, but they are known for their egg tarts. Mochee LA has simple but beautiful packaging that can be customized for weddings and other events.
Crumble & Whisk: Although the patisseries does offer pot pies and a few other baked goods, the main focus at Crumble & Whisk is the gourmet cheesecakes. The bakery has become the premier choice for cheesecakes in the San Francisco Bay Area thanks to Chef Charles Farrier’s culinary artistry. You won’t find a more aesthetically-pleasing cheesecake.
Make it legal
Do you need a license to sell baked goods from home?
You don’t need a license to sell baked goods from home. The baked goods you prepare in your unlicensed home kitchen can be sold as long as you follow the laws for cottage bakeries in your state.
Do I need insurance to sell baked goods from home?
Your home bakery should have general liability insurance and product liability insurance to protect you and your customers.
Texas Cottage Food Law
In Texas, you can own a cottage bakery with a gross annual business income of up to $50k. To start your cottage bakery in Texas, you must first complete safe food handling training. You may list your baked goods online in your Airmart shop, but the state requires that you hand-deliver the items to each customer. All of your baked goods must be labeled with the following:
- Your bakery name and address
- The common or usual name of the product (ex. ‘cupcake’ or ‘creme brulee’)
- Any major food allergens in the ingredients list, such as eggs, nuts, soy, peanuts, milk, or wheat
- This statement: “This food is made in a home kitchen and is not inspected by the Department of State Health Services or a local health department.”
California Cottage Bakery Law
In California, your cottage bakery can earn up to $75k annually.
Cottage bakeries in California may not sell items with time and temperature-sensitive ingredients. This is to prevent the growth of bacteria that may cause illness. For baked goods, that means you may not sell anything with cream or custard filling. To find out what you are allowed to sell from your home bakery, see the approved foods for cottage food operations in California here.
Florida Cottage Food Law
Florida is a good place to be a cottage baker! Cottage food operations in Florida can earn up to $250k annually, and you can sell any of the following from your home bakery:
- Loaf breads, rolls, biscuits
- Cakes, pastries and cookies
- Candies and confections
- Fruit pies and dried fruits
- Cereals, trail mixes and granola
- Coated or uncoated nuts
- Popcorn and popcorn balls
Choose your packaging
Baked goods are delicate and they need to be packaged carefully. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with how you package your bakery items. Even a simple addition of a custom sticker on the pastry boxes can help with brand recognition.
Set prices for your baked goods
Your homemade baked goods are worth much more than any store-bought cookies or cupcakes. After all, no one bakes quite like you do. When pricing your baked goods, you should factor in the cost of ingredients, tools, and packaging, the time it takes to make each item, and your talent (yes, you should put a price on that!). If you need some ideas for how to price your home bakery items, check out these Airmart shop menus:
At Basque Burnt Cheesecake, 6-inch specialty cheesecakes sell for $39-$55 depending on the flavor.
A box of 6 cupcakes is $35 at Naka Afro Patisserie.
One dozen cookies from Cookies by Relle costs $26.
Pick a name for your home bakery
Choose a cute, funny name for your bakery that’s easy to remember and full of personality. You can put your name in it, like “Cassidy’s Cakes” or choose something that fits the theme of your bakery. For example, Ube Galore Breads & More is a catchy name that perfectly sums up the shop. If you need help coming up with a bakery name, use our AI tool as a bakery name generator.
Choose a fulfillment method
- Pickup: Cottage bakeries are required to personally give each item to customers, so pickup keeps it simple. Pickup is the preferred fulfillment method for many of our Airmart merchants. The Airmart platform allows you to easily schedule pickups for every order. See how one cottage baker sets up her porch for no-contact pickups:
- Delivery: If you would like to hand-deliver items to each customer, Airmart provides a route planning tool to help you choose the most efficient delivery route for your orders. If you are located in the San Francisco Bay Area, you can use our affordable delivery service. For on-demand deliveries, you can use the DoorDash integration in your shop to request a DoorDash driver.
- Shipping: If you choose to ship your baked goods, we can help you get the best rates with our Shippo integration. Sending baked goods through the mail is a delicate process, so follow these tips to ensure everything gets to the customer in one beautiful piece: Webstaurant blog bakery shipping guide.
Take good pictures!
Your baked goods are gorgeous, so show them off! Good product photos can make or break your bakery in terms of sales, so take the time to snap well-lit, creative pictures of everything you bake.
Take a look at these stunning food photos from Airmart merchants:
Set up an online bakery shop for pre-orders
You could bake dozens of cookies and wait for the customers to come. Or, you could hold off on the baking and take pre-orders so that you only bake what you know you will sell. Airmart’s online shop tool makes collecting pre-orders for your bakery easy and organized. Set up a free shop or subscribe for $16/month to gain access to new shop themes and sales tools.
Here are some examples of different shops:
Cake Meet Me Patisserie has a website-like layout rather than a typical Airmart storefront.
Honolulu Rose Cakeshop has a more traditional Airmart bakery storefront:
Here is a mobile view of Sweet Little Things San Francisco:
Spread the word
Now it’s time to start marketing your home bakery business. Some bakery marketing tactics are completely free, others may be an investment.
- Tell your friends and family: A new business is like a new baby. Whether you make the announcement on Facebook or with old-fashioned postcards, let everyone know that your home bakery is taking orders.
- Post on social media: Share your bakery with the wider local community by creating a bakery Instagram, linking to your store in relevant Facebook groups, sharing your business with your neighbors on Nextdoor, and making TikTok and Pinterest videos of your cooking/baking process.
- Promote your business in person: You can also spread the word about your home bakery by dropping off business cards at local coffee shops and office buildings, hosting pop-up events, selling at farmer’s markets and night markets, and encouraging customer referrals.
- Bake for weddings: This is a great way to get lots of exposure for your bakery as well. If you can become a wedding planner’s preferred bakery vendor, you’ll get a steady stream of orders during the wedding season.
For more tips, check out our playbook on promoting your shop.
If you’d like help creating and implementing a strategic marketing plan utilizing SEO and PR tools, talk to our team about our marketing package.
What are you waiting for? Sell baked goods online to share your sweet talents!