I have been in business now for nearly 5 years. Up until this point I have been using someon elses kitchen space. I want to open a storefront that would be a combination of places bakery/retail cake supplies. There are no retail cake suppliers in my vacinity the closet ones require a 20-45 minute drive from my general location. I would like to bring cake supplies closer to my area and sale my specialty baked goods at the same time. Has any one had experience with this that they would be willing to share with me? I have no idea where to start. I have been doing research on the Small Business Adminstration (SBA) website and they keep talking about doing market research and writing a business plan 2 more things I know absolutely nothing about. I don't have much money to plunge into market research so if anyone has any ideas on how to get this done without spending a ton of money that would be helpful as well. Thanks in advance for any help my fellow ccers can offer

You seem pretty computer savvy, so Google market research and business plans. Read the definitions and educate yourself on how to do both.
OR you could use the search option on this site and read the thousands of postings reguarding both.
You are the only one that knows what you have and have not accomplished and what general path you want to take.
Five years in the business should give you a solid foundation on which to build.

Where are you located? If you let us know then those CC'rs in your area who have "been there-done that" might be able to give you some real insights!

I hear ya! I just spent MANY months doing research in my area and creating my business plan. You should contact IndyDebi...she sent me her business plan so I was able to see how a professional one looked like and what all to include, hopefully she can do the same for you. Mine now looks totally different but it was a HUGE help to have a starting off point. Hope this helps!

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I'm determined to be successful. This has been a dream of mine since I was about 8 years old. Now I'm nearly 5 times that and I'm ready to grab hold of my dream. I so appreciate the CC community for all of the support and advice. you guys ROck!! [/quote]

Running a bakery and operating a retail store are two very different business models. If you are serious about selling specialty cake supplies, I would advise hiring someone with retail experience to manage the retail side while you focus on the bakery.

I'm not even sure it's possible these days for a small retail shop to survive and make a profit...you would need to charge a significant markup to pay for your overhead, which would make buying supplies at your shop far more expensive than just ordering them online, unless you went with some kind of JIT fulfillment model (which has its own set of complications).