I recently moved my family into a new home and a new county in the state of New York. Where I moved from I was allowed to have a licensed bakery from home however the county I currently live in does not. I inquired at a local cafe/bakery who does not sell custom cakes just pre bought cheesecakes and pies. I asked them if they would be willing to meet to discuss me possibly running my cake business form there shop. I do have an appt. scheduled for tomorrow however now my problem is I'm not sure if I thought this thru all the way. If they are not willing to let me basically rent out the kitchen space to do make my cakes should I ask if they would be willing to team up so to speak not to be partners but kind of like I scratch your back you scratch mine. My customers can help there business and there customers can help mine. Not sure if this makes sense. I need some advice to from the experienced cake shop owners/bakeries to let me know if this is a smart idea or should I just find a kitchen I can rent out. I have a few orders coming up so I need to find a place asap. Any advice is appreciated.

NY does have a home processor license that allows you to sell wholesale, so you may want to look into partnering with the local cafe to sell your cakes wholesale, that way you may still be able to bake from home. You would need to have your numbers worked out beforehand to determine a wholesale price that would be profitable on your end while not pricing yourself out of the market once the cafe applies their markup.

If not then you should look at your business plan and see how much you can afford to pay in rent and still make enough of a profit while paying yourself a decent wage. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "teaming up", if you mean becoming an employee of the bakery that would be a good low-risk alternative.

Do you already have orders finalized? If so you owe it to those customers to let them know your situation, it isn't fair to them if you have to cancel their orders because you can't get legal in time. And you'll definitely want to take down your web site until you have the licensing issues worked out.

Thanks Jason....

According to the dept of health the only thing I can do from home is make generic cookies and sell them at a farmers market. Im meeting with the woman from the cafe tomorrow and I recently heard back from a local church thats willing to rent me there space. Im confident I can get all this worked out by the time I need to start working on my cakes. I would rather work for myself than be an employee of someone else. Teaming up meant me advertising in there bakery and using the kitchen and maybe giving them a profit. Is that something you heard of people doing???

Ashleyssweetdesigns, please view the NY Ag & Mkt link Jason posted. You may certainly do more than cookies. Call the Albany office (phone number on bottom of page) for clarification if there's something you do not understand.

Good luck!

I know about that page and when the inspector assigned to my district called me she stated adamantly that all I could do was bake cookies with no decoration ie icing and sell them at farmers markets. I questioned her several times because I was confused. I didn't want to argue with her and there is no one else that handles the inspections where I live. I wasn't sure how to proceed so I figured I had to do what she said which was find a commercial kitchen space.

Im going to call the Albany office in the morning and explain my situation. Maybe they can clear this up.