Do you want to start a cake business but you want to go niche and be unique? If YES, here are 45 best cake related business ideas & opportunities.
Cakes are sweet, nice and yummy. It is safe to say that most people love cakes and this is despite the new dieting trend that has swept most people along with it. Cake is one dessert that proves irresistible to people and that is why is constantly served at weddings, birthday parties and other happy events.
Cake making is part of the bakery industry and it is estimated that the industry involves more than 2,800 commercial bakeries and they together drag in a combined annual revenue of about $30 billion, along with about 6,700 retail bakeries with annual revenue of about $3billion.
The cake industry has been profitable and would continue to be, you only have to find a niche that suites you best and then engage in extensive marketing after you must have set up the business. Do not forget to seek the consent of local authorities especially if you intend to run your business from home. To help you along with picking the right business niche, we have listed quite a number of them here.
Best Cake Business ideas
Cake baking is one business that can be started from the home. To start this business, you need to make sure that your kitchen is clean and sanitary, and you should have space for your equipment like your mixer, refrigerator, oven and baking utensils.
Do you have space for bulk purchases of sugar, flour and other supplies? Do you have somewhere to store the finished cakes until they’re delivered or picked up? Another very important thing to take note of is licenses. You must ascertain if the government of your country allows baking commercial goods at home.
As of 2018, selling home-baked goods in New Jersey is illegal, so you have to do proper research on this regard. Where permitted, you can also start a baking business where you simply make the items in your home kitchen and then sell them online or to local bake shops.
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Online Cake Sales
One easy way to sell your already baked cakes is online. If you are on instagram, you would see a lot of chefs posting their delicacies there seeking followership and some types of businesses and partnerships.
You can follow their line and open as much social media accounts as possible, then you can start advertising your products there. Sites like Etsy would allow you to sell cakes and other specialty baked goods from an online shop. Then you can ship those items directly to your customers.
A pastry chef is a station chef in a professional kitchen, skilled in the making of pastries, cakes, desserts, breads and other baked goods.
You could also work as a pastry chef either for personal clients or on a freelance basis with local restaurants or bake shops. If you decide to take up an employment, you can look at getting employed at large hotels, bistros, restaurants, bakeries, and some cafes.
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Open a Healthy Cake Shop
Baked goods aren’t usually known for their nutritional value because of their high sugar, butter and cream content. This makes health conscious people stay away from them.
But you can carve out your own unique niche and take advantage of a growing health trend by offering cakes and baked goods that are a bit healthier than those found at an average bakery. You can maybe use gluten free flour, use less sugar or maybe use a supplement etc.
5. Supply gourmet cakes to restaurants
Gourmet cakes are moist and sweet desserts. These cakes are baked using different ingredients and using different styles or method. Gourmet cakes demand higher quality ingredients.
This might mean fresher eggs; refined butter and icing made with pure ingredients versus chemically manufactured sugars and processed products. Bakers spend more time doing things by hand and crafting the final product to meet professional grade standards.
Since they are typically used for very special occasions like weddings and formal gatherings, these types of cakes require a skilled hand when it comes to decoration. Gourmet cakes because of the care taken in baking them generally cost more than ordinary cakes. If you operate a special bakery, you can start baking and supplying gourmet cakes to restaurants.
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Start a cake rental business
One new business in the block as far as cakes are concerned is a cake rental business. Yes, people can now rent their wedding cakes. The rental wedding cake looks like a real cake, complete with fondant icing, but it is actually decorated with foam and plastic underneath.
There is usually a ‘hidden compartment’, where a real piece of cake is deposited and this is what bride and the groom get to cut in front of their guests. The cake is then whisked away into the kitchen where a regular sheet cake is waiting to be cut and served to the guests.
Pricing for fake cakes can run from $75 – $500 on average, while real wedding cakes can be double or triple the price. With cake rental, there are no concerns with hot weather, and as such the cakes are perfect for an outdoor wedding. This is an emerging market in the cake business that is waiting to be tapped into.
This is another niche idea in the cake business. As a cake decorator, you would be required to make very beautiful and unique designs on cakes, no matter the type.
If you are very good, people would get to hire your services to come and decorate their cakes for a fee. You can set up a cake decorating business and offer this business exclusively, or you can combine it with cake baking. You need to make and keep a catalogue you can show your clients so they can see some of your works.
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Sell Cakes
People love cakes and would not hesitate to buy them especially if they are beautifully decorated. You can open a shop where you get to sell all types of cakes. You can stock cakes for weddings, birthdays, anniversaries, everyday consumption, etc.
You may not necessarily be the one baking the cakes as you can meet bakers and offer to help them sell their goods. You can also conduct cake tastings so that people can tell you their preferences and you can relate back to the bakers.
If you want to specialize in a smaller type of baked item, you could open a cupcake shop with lots of specialty flavors and sell batches or individual cupcakes to customers. Cupcakes are made for individual consumption, so you do not need to source for people organizing events to market your cakes to them.
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Make Cake Pops
A cake pop is a form of cake styled as a lollipop. Cake crumbs are mixed with icing or chocolate, and formed into small spheres or cubes in the same way as cake balls, before being given a coating of icing, chocolate or other decorations and attached to lollipop sticks.
Cake pops can be a way of using up leftover cake or cake crumbs, but you can also make a business out of it and target children with it. Cake pops are also becoming increasingly popular, so you can specialize in this type of treat and offer them in batches or single servings.
Americans are getting very health conscious. With the rising trend of diseases, people cannot afford to be frivolous with their health.
There aren’t as many baked goods out there for people with gluten allergies, so that can be a profitable niche for bakers who want to provide baked goods without any gluten. If this business is marketed well, you can get a lot of loyal customers for your business.
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Open a Vegan Bakery
Another niche in the cake baking industry is to start baking cakes where you do not include any animal products like eggs or dairy.
You can start researching alternative ingredients that you can use to make equally sumptuous cakes that are way more nutritious than their animal products counterparts. Your cakes can be used to target the vegan community and any other health conscious customer.
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Open an Organic Cake Bakery
Organic is a way of growing and processing food that relies on healthy, rich soil to produce strong plants that resist pests and diseases.
Opening an organic bakery is one way to carve a niche for your bakery in the confectionery industry. With the rave of healthy eating, anyone who wants to cheat on their diets would want to do it the right way. All of your cake ingredients have to be certified as organic so as to be acceptable.
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Sell your cakes in carts
You may have awesome cake baking skills, but you may not have an avenue to sell your products. If you are doing this business in a small scale, you can start selling your cakes in carts. You should target where people would need your cakes and aim at supplying them. This business is great because you are mobile and as such are free to take your products around.
There is indeed the growing awareness of food trucks in the united states today. You can see food trucks that serve everything from ice cream to organic food to exotic diets. You could capitalize on the growing food truck craze and simply put a baking twist on it by offering deliciously made cakes on your trucks. You could also offer coffee or chocolate beverage to accompany it.
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Fair or Carnival Vending
Cakes are particularly popular at fairs, carnivals and similar events. So you can start a business where you travel to those events and set up stands offering your specially baked and designed cakes. You can also add other confectioneries in order to gain more of the market.
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Farmer’s Market Vending
Even though farmer’s markets are known more for produce and healthy items, there are some that will allow people to set up stands selling prepared food items. So you could bake your cakes and then sell them directly to customers at local markets. You could specialize your cakes to appeal to health conscious buyers at farmers markets.
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Cake Delivery Service
Instead of setting up shop at a fixed location, you could offer your cakes to customers where they are. Set up a website and menu and then let customers order specific items for delivery within your general area. If you do not have any culinary skills, you can decide to offer delivery services to cake bakeries. You can approach such bakeries, take their orders, and deliver them to the appropriate households.
You could also offer more general products that simply incorporate the items you bake. A gift basket service can be a great way to accomplish this. You can whip up deliciously looking gift baskets and sell them to people who are looking for unique gift ideas.
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Bake and Sell Cannabis Cakes
Imagine your favourite cake, but infused with the unbridled and buzzing power of cannabis. In states where medical and recreational marijuana is legal, you can create a baking business where you sell your specially made cakes to individuals who are qualified by law to be sold such products. This is a very special type of bakery business that may not be available to everybody.
You have to first of all certify that the use of marijuana is legal in your country and community, then you also certify that you can be allowed to run such a business. Marketing would not be a problem for you as the crowd who need it would definitely locate you.
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Freelance Cake Baking
If you want to bake at an actual bakery but don’t have the time or resources to set one up, you could travel around to different cafes and bakeries to offer your services as a guest baker or on a freelance or contract basis.
You can set up a freelance type of gig where you could offer your services to baking bars or any individual who needs help with baking. You can bake cakes for office affairs or may be things like showers and birthdays at homes…whatever people need.
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Cake Baking Supplies Store
For those interested in owning a retail business, you could open a store that sells everything that can help someone in the cake baking business. You can sell baking pans, flour and spices, nuts and exotic fruits, cookbooks and other essential baking supplies.
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Specialty Ingredients Sales
Sometimes cake bakers may want to go out of the ordinary and try something new, or they could get an order for new brands of cakes that require specialty ingredients that they are not familiar with. This has created a special cake business niche.
You can decide to set up a business where you retain specialty cake ingredients, especially those that might be difficult for bakers to find at general grocery stores.
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Cake Baking Teacher
Are you a seasoned cake baker and decorator? Do you have what it takes to give your customers utmost satisfaction whenever they patronize your services?
If you so, you can start your own cake baking school where you teach some of the basics of baking to students, or even specialize in more advanced baked goods. Quite a number of people would be willing to learn under you especially if you have gotten a good reputation for yourself.
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Online Course Creation
If you do not have the ability to impact your knowledge as a cake professional to students, you can start creating baking courses and offer them online. This would enable you to share your expertise with students from both your community and other countries of the world.
Creating and selling online courses is also a good way to train students if you do not have the ability or finances to set up a brick and mortar school.
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Author and Publish Cake Baking books
Yet another way to be part of the cake baking institution and to make profit from it is to author and publish cake baking books. To be able to publish marketable books, you should ensure that your cake baking recipes are unique and original.
Nobody would buy your books if you have nothing new to offer. After writing, you can publish your cookbooks on an online platform, or you can publish them offline if you have the wherewithal.
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Become a cake/food blogger
If you are not able to teach write online courses or even publish a cookbook, there is yet another way to give expression to your ideas, and that is through blogging.
You can constantly update your readers with new recipes and content, tips and new cake baking instruments that just debuted in the market. If you are able to constantly update and market your blog, you may start getting cake or food endorsements.
Video is also a popular format for sharing recipes and information about food and baking. So you could start your own YouTube channel where you share recipes tips and trick of baking, interview master bakers, and even conduct baking competitions; your opportunities here are endless.
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Baking Video Sales
Cake baking videos is another way to maximize the baking industry. You could create video tutorials and sell them individually online, similar to online courses but on a bit of a smaller scale. People would appreciate baking videos more than courses on baking as it would help them learn better.
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Cake Baking Competition Organizing
Baking competitions are popular on TV and all around us. You could organize your own event where you make money from admissions or sponsorships to highlight local baking talent. You can actually make a business out of this by bringing new bakers to limelight. You can get sponsorship from various manufacture of cake baking instruments or ingredients.
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Cake Baking Kit Sales
To help other bakers make specific items, you could sell kits that include all the items needed to make specific types of pastries especially cakes. To profit from this business, you need to have enough capital to stock your store, and you should as well hone your marketing skills.
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Cake Baking ingredients Subscription Service
This is another way to leverage the cake industry to create a profitable business. You can set up a subscription service with supplies and ingredients that would help other bakers to make various baked goods regularly. You need to market your service effectively to ensure that people would always subscribe to your services. To carve a niche for yourself, you can start supplying specialty ingredients.
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Baked Cake Subscription Service
You can as well set up a subscription service that includes the actual finished desserts instead of the supplies needed to make them. People would appreciate this more as they can have their favorite cakes whenever they want them without worrying about baking. Here too, marketing is your key to getting ahead of others.
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Cake Cutter Manufacturing
You can get a bit more specific with the products you offer in this industry. For example, you could specialize in creating cake cutters in fun shapes for other bakers. To maximize the industry you can also create cookie cutters.
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Cake Mold Manufacturing
Everyone loves cakes that come in fun shapes. You could make and sell cake molds and pans to help cake makers obtain quality cakes. You can decide to specialize in making non-stick cake molds that make cakes come out perfectly and untainted from ovens. The fact is that people are always looking for that perfect product that can make baking a lot easier for them.
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Baking Product Reviews
There are always new products in the market claiming one thing or the other. Because of the number of these products, people generally don’t know what to use anymore, and they cannot keep spending money hoping that they can buy the right product that can suit their needs.
You can serve as an expert who reviews various baking supplies and equipment on a blog or other publications. These reviews would now enable your clients know which products to choose. Product reviews is a good way to create content for your blog or YouTube page.
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Offer Cake Related Printables for Sale
A printable is a digital download in the form of art, graphic designs, and even text. You can download them from a website and print from your own computer. You might also consider selling recipes or other printable guides online. It’s a way to offer some content for sale without having to put together an entire book.
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Build a Baking App
For those who are tech-savvy bakers, you could even put together a mobile app that offers baking tips, recipes and other baking related content for users. You can even take it further by creating an app that connects cake bakers with retailers and consumers.
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Specialty Cake-Frosting Business
Another business you can operate from home is a specialty cake-frosting business that offers flavors that you won’t find in your local Supermarket. For example, if you like different types of teas, you can sell frosting flavors such as green tea, chai tea or orange pekoe tea.
Or if you want to combine salty and sweet flavors, you can offer apple-cheddar frosting or basil-mint frosting. You can sell your specialty frostings to bakeries, or you can offer to go apply the frostings for the bakeries.
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Online Cookbook Store
If you collect cookbooks about baking, you can turn this hobby into a profit by starting an online cookbook store that specializes in books on this subject.
You can feature books on various types of baking, such as French baked goods, Italian chocolate desserts, Southern desserts and Latin American desserts. In addition to the cookbooks, you can also sell gourmet baking ingredients from different suppliers in your city.
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Savory Cakes and Cookies
Most cakes and cookies are sweet, but you can add diversity to these treats by opening a bakery business that specializes in savory cakes or cookies. For example, you can include black pepper-balsamic vinegar cookies; roasted tomato, mozzarella and thyme cupcakes; and chili pepper and cheddar cookies just to make a difference.
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Wedding Cake Baking and Sales
Designing and creating one-of-a-kind wedding cakes is truly an art form. However, for the creative entrepreneur that possesses this talent, an incredible part-time business opportunity awaits by starting a business that makes and sells wedding cakes.
Many wedding cakes can retail for as much as $500 each or more and generally only cost about 20 percent of their retail value to make. Building alliances with wedding planners and caterers is the fastest way to establish the business, even though it’ll probably mean splitting the.
Additionally, be sure to check local requirements in terms of operating this business from home, as health board permits may be required.
If the business cannot be operated from home, inquire at local restaurants to see if a commercial kitchen can be rented on an hourly basis during non business hours to make the wedding cakes. Operating this type of specialty food business can generate an income of $300 or more each week on a part-time basis, making this a business opportunity well worth further investigation.
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Publish a cake guide
Another material that can be published as far as the cake business is concerned is a cake guide. Your cake guide should contain bakery basics, business requirements, how to operate a bakery from home, other costs, associations a baker can and should belong to, training needed, suppliers of ingredients and produce, etc.
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Export cakes and other baked goods
Instead of baking and focusing on the local market, one can also conveniently target the international market. It has been reported that the US bakery Industry has seen exports rise to over $1 billion dollars with a growth of 7.2%.
The largest importing countries of US baked goods include Canada, Mexico, Japan, Korea, united kingdom, etc. This goes to show that the baked goods export is very viable. If you can produce baked goods that meet industry specifics, you can start exporting them on a small or large scale.
45. Delivering gift cakes by mail
Delivering cakes by mail is one way to run a successful cake business. How this works is that you should first have a bakery where you bake assorted beautiful cakes fit for a gift. Next you have to create a user friendly website where your customers can book their cakes.
When clients come to your website, they would be required to choose a cake they want to be delivered to that special someone in their lives. They would then need to type in a special message that would be sent alongside the cake. This message will be printed on a luxurious gift card that will be inside their parcel when it arrives.
They would then have to enter the address of the recipient, and select a date the cake should be delivered, then they pay for the cake and delivery. Your responsibility would now be to send the cake to the recipient.