Hello,

I have a couple of questions about starting my own cake shop. I feel like I should rent space to start out with to start out slowly and build my clientele. Right now I make cakes for people and they just pay me for the ingredients or buy the ingredients.

I live in Ft. Lauderdale, FL area so I have no plans of working out of my home. I cannot have a separate kitchen in my townhouse.

There is information and pages out there, but it's all very confusing. I guess if I called the Dept of agriculture or whoever I need to call, maybe they could explain it to me. I'm not sure where to start first. What do I have to do first? Pick a name? Find a place to rent? How does one start this?

Thanks for any advice.

Michele

Florida has a cottage food law.

Here is a place to start: http://homebasedbaking.com/knowledgebase/rules-regulations/florida/

Just get a business license, business bank account, inspection if it is required and all the other necessary steps. There are tons of forum posts on here about steps. I'm sure someone will point you in the right direction. But you may work out of your home.

Your Health Dpt is a good place to start.

I am also hoping to start a cake business in Florida (Jacksonville). I want to start small by selling at Farmers Markets, but I checked with two of the most popular markets and they had a strict rule about only accepting bakers/food artists that prepare items in a commercial, licensed and inspected kitchen. I'm prepared to pay the cost of working in a commercial kitchen, but if I can pocket that cost and apply it to something else such as marketing or just lowering my expenses, I'd rather take this route.

The commercial kitchen I found works out to a flat monthly fee ($170 monthly). I keep trying to find everything I can about selling at farmers markets, and what I have come across has ranged from negative to neutral with a few positive stories thrown into the mix. I'm continuing to research and the two markets I'm hoping to eventually sell at exposes me to a combined 25,000 market shoppers weekly. I don't know if that makes a difference from the experiences of others, but I have a feeling the visitor count is higher than in most places.

Of course, I'd like to make money at the market (I wouldn't enjoy sitting in the hot sun all day for free ) , but I'm hoping that it'll generate interest in private orders if people become familiar with the quality of my work. But I obviously am hoping to break even and earn some money too. Forgoing the cost of the kitchen would make that more likely. But I want to do everything by the books.

The use of the kitchen is unlimited; I can come and go as I please. I should also note that the 25,000 visitors I mentioned are between two markets, one on Saturday, which draws 5,000 people. And the other which runs 7 days per week throughout the year. I can't be in two places at once and factoring days that I choose to not sell at the market would probably cut that number in half. But it still has potential. Honestly, I'm just overwhelmed at this point with all the research that I'm doing. It's a lot to take in and there's certainly more involved to getting into the cake business (legally) than I ever imagined. OP, I did not mean to hijack your thread - sorry.

That's an insanely good deal for a kitchen....

At $170/month for unlimited hours it's hard to believe the kitchen is profitable. I would have a backup ready in case they go out of business, jack up the price, or scheduling becomes impossible (assuming each tenant gets the same deal).

Unfortunately, this is the only commercial kitchen in the area. The others I found were no less than nearly 2-hrs away. This kitchen has a waiting list, so I really can't even guarantee that I would get in when I need to. Luckily, I'm not planning on doing a thing selling wise for at least a year - maybe more. Maybe another commercial kitchen will randomly spring up in my area before then ? I don't like doing anything without a plan 'b' and 'c' just to cover my bases.