For creative people who love cakes, being a home-baker can be a great start-up idea. Is it the right profession for you? Here’s all you need to know before deciding.
1. Career in Bakery & Confectionery
Cakes are a must for all kind of celebrations – birthdays, marriages, bachelorette parties, anniversaries, baby showers, and so on. Home-bakers and pastry chefs make cakes and desserts such as cakesicles, cake pops, brownies, etc. right at home. These are made-to-order, i.e. made according to clients’ particular requests. For someone who loves baking and making people happy, a career in home-baking can be very fulfilling.
Successful bakers create memorable flavours by trying unique ingredient combinations and baking techniques. Some also specialize in decoration and cake art, or a specific type of dessert/cake. While this career can be demanding in its own right, the best part is that one can start a baking business at home and without any qualification or formal education.
Contents: Jump to Section
1.2 Social Image
1.3 Reasons to Become a Pastry Chef
2.2 Physical Demands
2.3 Psychological Demands
3.2 Related Hobbies to Take Up
3.3 Related Movies/ TV Shows
3.4 Related Fiction to Read/ Novels
4.2 Traveling Required
4.3 Average Workday/What to Expect
5.2 Threats from Automation
5.3 Common Reasons for People to Quit
1.1 Industry/Sector
Food industry (bakery and confectionery).
As the name suggests, home-bakers start their own bakeries. They may also grow their business to become a local bakery/confectionery/cafe.
1.2 Social Image
Mediocre.
As much as the profession of baking and confectionery can be fulfilling, both creatively and financially, a lot of people still don’t regard this profession very highly. However, in rare cases, especially for bakers who have received media coverage, are held in high regard.
The profession of home bakers is not as highly respected as, say being a doctor or lawyer, by most conservative people. One of the reasons for that is also that this is a less competitive field to get into. For home bakeries the reason for social image being mediocre is that people often don’t understand why their cakes are pricey compared to the local bakery chain or outlets. They end up terming it as ‘overpriced’ even if the ingredients used are of premium quality and always baked fresh, and often even better than the local bakery chains.
1.3 Reasons to Become a Home-Baker
Flexible timing, low cost of investment, no degree required, good work-life balance, creative fulfillment, chance to meet new people.
One of the best reasons to become a home-baker is that it is a great creative start-up wherein you can have an ample scope of managing your family, being at home while doing your work. There is also a very good work-life balance, suitable mostly for mothers. Furthermore, the cost of starting your own bakery can be very affordable, and can even be done if you don’t have a degree in pastry, since you can be self-taught.
Financially, it totally depends on the home-baker as they can earn depending on the number of hours they can put in, etc. The more orders you can manage, the more you can earn, also keeping in mind the quality of the end product.
2. What It Takes to Be a Home-Baker
2.1 Personality Traits Required/ Preferred
Creativity, sharp flavour perception, communication skills, hard-working, time-management skills.
Creativity is the prime requirement, since both the ability to create a great flavour and a decorative cake are dependent on that. The more creative the baker is, the more they can be successful. Next, you need a great sense of taste, and that has to be honed consistently by trying new and unique flavours, since your biggest strength is to create an epic tasting cake.
Also, good communication skills are strongly required for dealing with your customers, especially to successfully understand their requirement and explaining your vision to them. Needless to say, home bakers also need to be hard working and know how to manage their time well, so they can work from home easily.
2.2 Physical Demands
Long standing hours, long work hours during bulk orders.
Standing for several hours at a stretch is the biggest physical demand that is inescapable in this profession. Also, there can be many sleepless nights and excessive work hours when one would get bulk orders.
2.3 Psychological Demands
Little socialization opportunities, especially in the beginning of career, high work-pressure during bulk orders, dealing with tricky customers.
Home-bakers have to work in the confines of their homes, so there is no social life in the beginning of their career. This isolation can be even more pronounced if one wants to create a “brand name”. Moreover, for home-bakers, there can be high work pressure during busy times, and some customers can also be unhappy, especially if they don’t get their orders right.
3. How to Build Interest in a Career in Bakery
3.1 Extra Curricular Activities Recommended
Practice flavours and decoration, baking clubs, 3D modelling or illustration.
Practice makes a man perfect, so if you’re considering a career in baking, keep on practising in your free time; take it up as your hobby to make your cakes look neat and crisp. If you’re interested in cake art or decoration, there’s so much more to practise, like buttercream, fondant, non-fondant, fresh cream, ganache, etc. You can join a baking club at college to meet like-minded people or practise more.
Other than that, you may also want to try your hand at digital illustrations, graphic designing and/or 3D modelling, since these creative extra-curricular activities will help you visualize your cakes. It’ll help you learn design theory and build visual skills.
3.2 Related Hobbies to Take Up
Art, sketching, coloring, calligraphy.
Art/ painting and sketching are some great hobbies you’ll enjoy if you’re keen on taking up a career in baking. To explain to your customer the image that’s in your mind, one needs to draw a rough sketch. So getting some pracrice on sketching still life and figure drawing will help. Also try hobbies like calligraphy and coloring, since the sense of balancing colours and a very good handwriting are added advantages in this profession.
3.3 Related Movies/ TV Shows
Cake Boss
Ace of Cakes
Charly’s Cake Angels
Netflix series: Zumbo’s Just Desserts
Sugar Rush
Nailed It
3.4 Related Fiction to Read/ Novels
How to Be A Bawse by Lily Singh can definitely be a boost for a start up, where she says, “there
are no shortcuts.”. This definitely was an inspiration for me which made me work harder towards
my dream.
4. Life as a Home-Baker
4.1 Part-Time Options
Yes. Home-baking can certainly be a part-time profession.
4.2 Traveling Required
No. Inter-city commute may be required if you do cake-deliveries or for getting special supplies once in a while.
4.3 Average Workday/What to Expect
The average day would be spent catering to cake orders as per your customers’ requests. Some days may be more busy than others, especially during wedding season, if you do wedding cakes. Also, there may be some late night work in case a customer requires a late-night bacholerette or birthday party cake.
In the early years of your career, you would have to work harder to do promotion as well as to improve your craft and flavour. However, with time, you can be more efficient. Practice will increase your baking speed and therefore in a day of working a maximum of 10 hours, you can make huge cakes of upto 8kgs or so. You’ll improve in both speed and quality, which would increase your sales as well as income.
5. Future of Your Career in Baking
5.1 Retirement Age
Bakers usually retire at older than average ages, on an average at about 65 years old.
5.2 Threats from Automation
No. Automation poses no immediate threats to the home-baking industry, especially if you can make very tasty cakes!
5.3 Common Reasons for People to Quit
Hard work without smart work may discourage entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is about planning, time-management and other skills, so a combination of everything is required to earn your living through it.
Shaili Guha is a self-taught home-baker from Kolkata. She has a B.Sc. degree from Jadavpur University and a M.Sc. from Manav Rachna International University in Nutrition & Dietetics. Her home bakery Kettle Petal, Kolkata, has a rating of 4.4 in Zomato and her repeat clients include Nestle India Ltd. She started baking as a hobby, which became a passion and finally became her full-time career. She can be contacted by email. Her work is available on Instagram & Facebook.
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