I'd like to know if anyone has any advice on teaching cake decorating classes. I live in California and I know that you can't have a home bakery. My idea is to have a small side business as a traveling cake decorating teacher?! Has anyone done this before? Any advice is greatly appreciated!

I like doing this. It has been spotty do far, but it is fun.

Figuring out what to charge is a tough one. Your local economy kind of dictates what people are willing to pay. I charge by person. If I have to travel very far, then I charge traveling expenses.

A web site is a good way to let the world know about your business. The key words you use for web crawlers will make big difference.

I like to teach based on what the students have and what they want to learn. Having a teaching outline is great for classes that span over several days or weeks. Teaching a few basics for a one day class seems to work well.

Good luck with your plans.

Michele

From a legal standpoint in CA you should be OK as long as you are using the customer's kitchen. We used to offer classes (specialty baking and decorating at $60/hour), there is so much prep involved it turned out to be more profitable making cakes. But if you don't have commercial space it could be a viable option.

Another option is to also teach through local adult ed programs. They take care of all the administrative work and advertising. From there, you can build a following and gain more students interested in private lessons.

It is not recommended that one teach in *their* home but for you to travel to a student's home.
I just finished teaching up to 6 Amish ladies. The one most interested opened her home to her relatives and I traveled abut 45 minutes to her house.
It was well worth it to me for the 1st few sessions as there were 6 @$20 ea but as the class dwindled down to just 2 it was no longer worth my gas.
I already had lesson plans from when I taught yrs ago so there wasn't them much prep for me.

kakeladi wrote

"It was well worth it to me for the 1st few sessions as there were 6 @$20 ea but as the class dwindled down to just 2 it was no longer worth my gas. "


The way to avoid this is to have a set cost for a set number of weeks. The onus is then on the student to attend or not. When I took art lessons I (and others in the class) always had to pay for the 10 weeks of classes in advance. If we lost interest and failed to attend we did not get a refund.

These are all really great suggestions... thank you so much! I think I'm going to look into all of these options.

kakeladi wrote: "It was well worth it to me for the 1st few sessions as there were 6 @$20 ea but as the class dwindled down to just 2 it was no longer worth my gas. "........
........cakeyouverymuch replied: The way to avoid this is to have a set cost for a set number of weeks. The onus is then on the student to attend or not............

I am very well aware of that These ladies just could not make up their minds as to what they wanted to learn. They just wanted to improve what they already knew.....And I hadn't taught in some 8 yrs - was just chomping at the bit to get back into teaching & wasn't prepared/didn;t think it out much at all