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good idea, it’s a pity no one answered :-((((

Hi! I started the transition to becoming a fully self employed home cake making business back in March this year. I made the decision after a lot of encouragement from family and friends as I was already doing a lot of projects and developing my skills. I had previously worked as a manager in healthcare for a number of years, so had a lot of transferable business skills and although I have had no real formal training I am a self taught cake decorator and used a lot of tools to help me practice my skills especially with online tutorials and advice from a number of Facebook groups and online blogs. I now work part time in my day job and focus on my cake business 4 days per week – this for the moment works for me but in the longer term I do want to do this full time. The only advice I would give is build up a good relationship with your EHO, obtain your Food Hygiene Level 2 qualification, ensure you have Public Liability insurance and keep good accounts and records as you will have to declare any earnings to HM Revenue (even if you are earning under the tax threshold). I have an accounts background so manage my own accounts but some people do want to look at employing and accountant to ensure they are completing their self assessment correctly.

My only other piece of advice is don’t under sell yourself – in my area there are other cake decorators who charge a lot less than I do but they don’t appear to provide the same quality of cake / decoration skills I do. I probably only get about 40-50% of the work I actually quote for but I truely believe that it is better to make a profit on this amount of work than break even or worse make a loss on 100% of the work. I think we all leap into this business to make some extra cash not to lose money!

I hope this helps and if you wanted to have a chat please let me know – I probably don’t have the answers to everything but maybe can at least point you in the right directed.

Glenys x

Hi my name is kimberly and I am currently studying environmental health at university. I have been making cakes for a long time but learned how to decorate a cake about a year ago. I had a great teacher who taught me the basics of flower making and the rest is self taught. I am really enjoying being able to set up a cake business and experience environmental health from both sides. I have just set up as a business in October and so far things are looking promising. I havebeen doing a lot if fundraising for a friend to put on a show and it has worked really well to get people to taste my cakes. I also completed a princes trust business course.
My advice is to think of your target customer and come up with an advertising strategy that is cost effective and gets to the right people as opposed to millions of flyers everywhere.

Thanks
Kimberly x

Thank you for replying Glenys and Kimberly, I really appreciate your comments and advice.

I have been hobbying at sugar craft for the last 7 years and mostly self taught but have been baking all my life. I’m doing the City & Guilds course in Cake Decorating because of its reputation and it has taught me a few good things along the way. My passions are sugar flowers and royal icing.

My background is in Managed Pensions Payroll Processing and after managing a small team for a year, decided that I wanted to start a family and change my career. Its hard work with sleepness nights, studying and making/decorating cakes but am loving it so much more than my previous profession.
At the moment I will be working on making myself known in the local area by networking with other local businesses and attracting more likes and shares on Facebook.
I will have a look at both of you pages and like them now:-)xx

I have just popped over and like both your pages and am really impressed by them. I’d better get baking!!!lol xx