What Is It Really Like Running a Home Baking Business?

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Dan: What does it really take to turn a passion for baking into a business? Kathy Pry has done exactly that from her own kitchen. home baker as sweet as it sounds? Let's find out. Today on Time We Discuss, I wanna welcome Kathy Pry, and it's time we discuss what it's like working as a baker. Kathy, thank you for joining me today.

Kathy Pry: Oh, thank you for having me.

Dan: This is really, really cool. I've said this multiple times on the show. I have a horrible sweet tooth. Just, it's awful. Even if I don't like the thing and it's there, I will usually eat it.

Kathy: You should be my neighbor then.

Dan: I would love that, I would love that. One of my previous bosses, his wife loved to bake. So whenever she was trying out a new recipe, he would always bring it in for us to test. I loved it, loved it.

Kathy: That's exactly what I do.

Dan: So let's talk about you. Let's talk about you as a baker. So typical day, you're getting ready to do your thing. What is a typical day like for you?

Kathy: Well, generally my baking day starts after dinner because it's my side business. And so I have my schedule for the week, how many cakes I have or cookies or whatever I'll be baking. So I just get started generally around between six and seven and I can be baking to about nine or 10 o'clock at night. And then planning what's gonna be, cleaning up and then getting ready for what I'm gonna do tomorrow to prepare for, usually most of my business is for the weekend.

Dan: How far in advance do you typically bake your products? Can you do it 48 hours in advance? Can you do it five days in advance? What is the limit there?

Kathy: Well, cake actually freezes very well. So I may bake on Monday, pop it in the freezer. I may, if I have cookie order, I may make the cookie dough, pop it in the freezer Fridays, I get it all out or depending on when the order is for and I will defrost it while I'm making the frosting. And it's so much easier to work with a cold cake because it's not as fragile. And cake amazingly freezes very well. And I've been told it's actually better after it's been frozen.

Dan: That is really, really good to know. My mom is a wonderful baker and she'll send us home with stuff whenever we go to visit and invariably we get so much of it, it has to go in the freezer. And like you're saying that when it comes out, defrost in the microwave for a little bit or let it sit out depending how soon you wanna eat it. And it's in great shape. So I can definitely agree with what you're saying. It tastes amazing coming out of the freezer, yeah.

Kathy: Yeah, I'll give my kids stuff and same thing when they go home and I say, you know, you can freeze it, you can eat it, you can freeze half of it. It's very flexible. That's the nice thing about it.

Dan: So you mentioned cookies, you mentioned cakes. Why just, and maybe you do more than that, but why those two things? Is it a higher profit margin? It's easy to turn them out quickly. Why do you bake what you bake?

Kathy: I guess it just started with what people wanted. Cakes were mostly what people wanted and cupcakes. Things get a little trendy, cake pop sometimes, but cakes are more profitable and easier than cookies. So if someone's looking for a donation, which I generally will say, hey, how about some cupcakes? And I can make them a whole bunch of cupcakes and it's easier than making a whole bunch of cookies.

Dan: Okay, that makes complete sense. Let's go back in time a little bit. How did you actually get started doing this? This kind of stemmed from just, you start doing it as a hobby and you start giving it out to people. And then how did you actually make that jump from there to selling?

Kathy: Well, I always loved baking and my mom really didn't let us bake. I'm the oldest of six and I think she just likes a peace and quiet. So she would go do her baking. So it was like something I always wanted to do because I couldn't do it. So gradually, again, bringing cakes to work, sending cakes, making my kids birthday cakes, forcing cake on everybody I knew. I used to banquet waitress when I was in college and I was always intrigued by the pastry chefs and the wedding cakes. And I was always like, I wanna make a wedding cake. In my head, I wanted to do it. So one year for my in-laws anniversary, we had a party and I did a tiered cake and I was hooked. I did one for my parents 50th anniversary. So it just gradually, and then I start people saw just that at that point, I got a website, I got on social media, people were hearing about my cake. So my love for baking and giving away baked goods became a business.

Dan: Talk to me about social media. For this particular business, how important is social media to your business and supporting your business model?

Kathy: I have a Instagram account and I have a Facebook account. My kids set both up for me. But I post on both generally. And I find that Facebook, I seem to get more business from. So that's my customers are on Facebook. The mom's having the first birthdays or the back it up, I did a baby shower cakes and it just goes from there. So it seems that social media for me is Facebook heavy and that's where most of the people find out about me.

Dan: What about local in-person groups like the young moms groups or the moms of multiples groups or anything like that? Have you had the opportunity to socialize with them and try to do some word of mouth networking there to help get some more of those cakes out the door?

Kathy: I have not. Although I have a sister who was constantly, I think on those groups and recommending me. But no, and it's something, I think about it but I just haven't had a chance to do it.

Dan: What is something that maybe you've tried to bake and sell and you decided, no, I'm not doing this anymore. And why?

Kathy: Well, getting back to cake pops, every time I make them, I say, I'm not doing it again. So they are very tricky. They fall off the stick, they crack. There's so much involved. So I still make them occasionally but they are very tricky. They're very finicky to do. So that's one thing that I kind of stay away from.

Dan: That's really good to know. A lot of times I try to identify different problematic pieces that other people could learn from. And it sounds like cake pops, might need a little more TLC, maybe a little more time investment or something like that. So that's good to know. So you're going into that, that's perfect, good.

Kathy: Yeah, I'm not real great at decorating sugar cookies either, but I found kind of a loophole to that. And I got a printer, an edible printer and it just prints on the cake. So I can print anything I want on a cookie and I can do it on a cake. It prints, it's big and it can print on a half sheet cake. It can print on M&M. So it's kind of helps me with my weaknesses.

Dan: That is really cool. I need to get a link from you and put it in the description because I can see just amateur, hobbyists. I can see so many people being like, "I want to check this out, that sounds great." It's very cool, yeah. We talked about your schedule during the week. Let's talk about on the weekend when you have an event, what is your schedule typically like at that point in time?

Kathy: Okay, it depends on the events. I have my cake business where you can order cakes or cupcakes and then I have a subscription box once a month that I deliver on the second Sunday of the month. So it's mostly in the Southeastern Pennsylvania area where I'm located. And so that weekend is very busy. And in fact, I have my sister and my niece come over and help me on those weekends. I also just recently started a cake cart. It's kind of like a little stand at the end of my driveway that I have on Saturday and Sunday. So I have to get up a little early because I make some bread for it. So I'll get up and I'll knead some bread, let it rise, get a shower, come down, bake it. So Saturday mornings are early, just getting some baking done before the cake cart goes out. So busy, busy weekends.

Dan: That is awesome. I just thought about this. I bet your house smells amazing with all the baking you're doing.

Kathy: Yeah, I just baked some lemon blueberry coffee cake and it smells really good. It's always good.

Dan: This is bad for me. I think I got to look into the subscription box that you're talking about. So talk to me a little bit more about that. Have you looked into shipping more outside of the area? Have you at least started to look at that? What are some hidden barriers there? Anything that you found out that you can share?

Kathy: In the subscription box, there's a regular size and a family size. There's four cupcakes in a regular, four cookies, another kind of cake or bread and another small treat. And I guess shipping cupcakes kind of seems tricky and I know it would involve ice packs and I think it would be very expensive to do. So that's kind of been like something that's making me hesitate into doing that.

Dan: That makes complete sense. And I kind of figured that would be a large barrier to entry unless you were shipping like three dozen cookies or something like that where it's gonna be worth it to do that.

Kathy: Yeah, I did one time ship to my cousin in California and everything arrived, it's fine.

Dan: So I had this thought earlier and I think about almost like the idea of a consignment shop where you can go and like sell something on consignment. Do you know, does anything like that exist in the world of bakery that you can take stuff that you've made and sell it at like another store as like under a white label or anything like that? Does anything exist like that that you know of?

Kathy: I think so. There's a few shops around here where I know a girl who sells cookies at. And there's several similar small, it's kind of a catch all store where people have booths and they sell you know, jewelry or shirts and they have baked goods. At one point I sold, there was a little, it's not really a farmer's market, but it was kind of like a produce and they had kind of vintagey stuff there. And I started selling things made from their produce there. They're closed now, but I would get the zucchini from there and then bring back zucchini bread and sell that. So I did that for a while. So I think, yeah, there are some opportunities to do things like that.

Dan: Okay, that is really good to know too. What about this? I remember when I was a kid, my mother had her own ceramic business and it was the ones where you would pour the slip in the mold, you would take it out of the mold, you would clean it up, paint it, sell it, that kind of a thing, as opposed to like throwing on a wheel or something like that. And one of the things she learned very early on was that flea markets, not the place to sell your goods because people were expecting super low prices. They wanted to haggle and just, they wanted to get a huge bargain essentially. So with that in mind, are there any types of places that you stay away from because of a similar thing where it's like either people that aren't looking to buy or they're looking, it's the price you're charging is too expensive for that type of event. What tips do you have from that angle when it comes to different venues where you wanna sell your baked goods?

Kathy: I have done a few things like that. In Downingtown where I live, there's a good neighbor day on 4th of July and they bring in carnival, they have all kinds of events throughout the day, it's a lot of fun and two times I tried it. I was selling similar things to one of the typical the carnival stands and they were there too. And people were more apt to go to the other place because I just had a table with a little awning and they had all the signage and the lights and it was more unique. So I found that that wasn't really something that was worthwhile for me. I brought a lot of stuff home from that. And I did a neighborhood one closer and it was kind of very similar. There was other people there selling food that had fancier setups. So for me, it wasn't really worth it.

Dan: I'm curious, what about this? Have you ever tried, a lot of times you'll see a multi-family yard sale or something like that, like a neighborhood yard sale. Do people ever set up close to it, not associated with it per se, but close to it where you didn't try to catch some of that traffic coming in or coming out? Have you ever done that? Any success there?

Kathy: Funny you should say that. My neighborhood's having a neighborhood yard sale on Saturday, tomorrow. And I'm actually trying to see if I can get some of their business to my cake cart. So we'll see. And I wouldn't have a problem working with other people like that. I think there's a lot of small businesses that can support each other and I think that's really beneficial. So, we'll see how

Dan: That's awesome, I love it, I love it. Okay, let's talk education. I get the impression that, and I could be wrong, but I get the impression you probably didn't go to a culinary arts school, you probably didn't do any kind of formal training in dessert making or anything like that, but maybe you did. So let's talk about that. And I know you talked about baking as a child or growing up in your Talk to me about how you actually honed your craft and became the baker that you are.

Kathy: I didn't go to culinary school. I just had family recipes that I used. And as I was starting to become a baker, I would get cookbooks. I have piles of cookbooks, that's my thing. I sit outside in the summertime and read cookbooks. So I would like to experiment and try different recipes. At about that time, I've been doing this for, it's gradually gone up for about 20 years. And then there started to be groups online that I could read or participate in, see what people were doing and get suggestions or recipes from different people. My biggest education I guess I got was when I went to a Wilton class and learned how to make buttercream roses and how to decorate cakes. That was my first real education in the cake business just so, because I always wanted to learn how to make the roses so I could go on to make a wedding cake. And now there are so many websites dedicated to, and podcasts, to baking that I get a lot of my recipes from online. See somebody, I get a lot of recipes from them, I'll buy their cookbook. So I know it's a good system of recipes they have. So yeah, it's just learning as I go. I have signed up for some classes online how to do different things, mostly cake decorating or just along that line.

Dan: That's really cool. That is really, really good to know. I like it seeing what kind of barriers are out there, how easy it is for people to do what you're doing. And it sounds like that there's a lot of opportunity without any formal education. And if you wanna spend some money to learn a little extra, there's plenty of opportunities for that as well. I absolutely love that. Okay, so I want you to think about you as a baker and I want you to think about what makes this the best job out there.

Kathy: Well, I would say I love making people happy and cake makes everybody happy. I get to be part of everybody's best moments. I get to do, there's one example of, I made a baby shower cake. I did the first birthday. This little girl's turning 13 this year. I've made every single one of her birthday cakes. I'm part of the family. It's just, I make the bridal shower cakes. I do the wedding cakes. Then I go on to the baby shower. I'm always there, part, making people happy. And I just love that part.

Dan: I talk to different people and the idea with any business is you wanna have a bunch of those repeat customers. And you almost hit the goldmine there, it seems like with this particular family, you have them right from birth, all the way up to, that is awesome, lovely.

Kathy: Yeah, it is, it's great.

Dan: Talk to me about the other side of the coin. What about, what makes this the absolute worst job?

Kathy: Well, sometimes I'm up at two in the morning and I'm like, why? It's just, stuff happens. My oven, what's going on? I've had, where we live, sometimes we lose power. So that's kind of like, there's the things that feed into it, but being organized is very helpful. Otherwise, and, because you can forget about a cake and I've done that, someone, hey, Kathy, what time can I pick up my cake? And I'm like, oh no. Thank goodness, no one's ever really caught me. I've been able to, but it happens. So that's the stressful part of it, just making sure you remember everything and know that if you're staying up late tonight, hopefully tomorrow night, you'll get to bed on time.

Dan: Where I'm gonna go with this next question, I can kind of relate. So as a creator, it's important that I include buffer time between when I actually book my guest, record, and then drop it for everyone to watch. So we're recording this in April. Like I said before we started recording, this doesn't drop until June, so plenty of time there. Because things come up, life happens. So that being said, how much of a buffer do you, and maybe you don't, maybe you do, how much of a buffer do you typically build into the, when you're baking something for a person and they have to pick it up? You usually try to knock it out 48 hours ahead of time, just in case something happens. What do you do as far as the buffer goes?

Kathy: I generally will do it the day before, if I can, sorry. That way, like you said, everything is ready to go. I pop it, if I have a room, I pop a cake in the refrigerator because cold cake travels better. I also, I didn't mention I have a licensed home kitchen. So I'm not allowed to sell anything that has to be refrigerated, but I do refrigerate my stuff just so that people can transport it a little easier. Like a wedding cake, it needs to be super cold so that it stays until you get to the venue. But yeah, at least a day ahead. I didn't used to always do that, but I have learned. And now, except tomorrow I have an order for cupcakes and they're on a board in the shape of a number 60. And I'm gonna do those last minute because there's no protection to keep them fresh. They'll just be in a box.

Dan: I'm so glad you mentioned the licensed home kitchen. One of the things I wanted to ask, and I was debating on whether or not I was going to, I had to do with the cottage laws, I think it's called. But talk to me about the licensed home kitchen. What is the process for that? What are the perks for that? The disadvantages? I don't know nothing about that. So talk to me more about the licensed home kitchen part.

Kathy: It's different everywhere. So where I live, I went to my township, I told them what I wanted to do. They gave me the parameters of, like I can't have any employees, I can't put up any signage. So they were okay with it there. Then I had to go to the state of Pennsylvania and the Department of Agriculture runs cottage bakeries or licensed home kitchens in Pennsylvania. They have a bunch of rules. I had to get my kitchen in order. Another thing is you can't have any pets and because, you know, food. So then they come out and they inspect and they review everything with you. They make sure, you know, your water's hot enough, your refrigerator is cold enough. They give you tips of different things. Every time they come out, there's a couple new things that you need to know. But I follow, you know, I'm a rule follower, so I follow the rules that they give me. I'm like, I can't make cheesecake. I can't make cream cheese frosting. Anything, like pie, I can't do pie. So I work within the rules and I'm busy enough doing, you know, those things.

Dan: So I wanna hang on that for a second. Why can't you do cheesecake and pie? Is it because of your kitchen setup or is it just part of the rules in Pennsylvania here?

Kathy: The rules are if you have a licensed home kitchen, you can't make anything that needs to be refrigerated. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Although I could have a commercial freezer in my house or refrigerator, I'm still, I'm not allowed to.

Dan: Okay, that is really good information to know as well. Okay. Yeah. Do they ever do like surprise inspections? Or is it just done annually? What's the frequency like? Talk to me about that.

Kathy: It varies. I was on two years or 18 months it's been two years recently, but one time they just popped in and I didn't know. And my husband was working at home and he said, "Oh, you passed your kitchen inspection." And I went, and then I found out the next time it's because I didn't have hours on there. So if I had had hours that I was a licensed, you know, home kitchen working, they wouldn't have done that but it wasn't meant to be a surprise per se, but you know, now they come on appointment. So, you know, cause like I'm at work in the day and you know, I need to be here, so.

Dan: Let's talk about, and I know one off the top of my head. Let's talk about some of the hidden perks of having a home bakery. What are some of the hidden perks there?

Kathy: There's always cake at my house. My husband goes to bed before me sometimes and he'll wake up and there'll be cupcakes sitting next to him. I'm like, "Just taste it." Like I said earlier, the biggest perk to me is making people happy. Now the cake stand that I have at the end of the driveway, I have a ring camera in it. And I put samples out a lot of times and the little kids in the neighborhood come by. I see them on their bikes and I just love it. You know, it's just, I don't care if they eat all the samples. It's just like gonna be such a good memory for them to remember, you know, "Oh yeah, there was this cart and it had cake and we used to get samples." And you know, I just think that's a lot of fun.

Dan: That is awesome. I absolutely love it. I love it. Now, what happens when there are different family gatherings, family parties? Is it expected that you are bringing the pastries do people still ask you? What is that like?

Kathy: Well, it's kind of the opposite a lot. People don't wanna impose. And I'm always like, "I'm a cake pusher. You know I'm gonna bring it." And then I have to be like, "But if you don't want me to, I won't." Maybe they're like, "We're sick of that kind of cake. We just wanna do something else." It's okay. But generally I bring cake to everything or cupcakes or whatever's going on. My brother just had his 60th birthday and it was 80s themed and I made a Pac-Man cake with little cupcake ghosts. So, you know, I enjoy that. It makes me happy.

Dan: I think I could talk about this for hours. Like I said, such a sweet tooth. The whole idea of just the sweets. I mean, I love it. But unfortunately I am running out of time. Before I hand the floor over to you, I wanna take a second and thank Tara Thistlethwaite for introducing us. Tara was in episode 140 as an event planner. Everyone, please go check out that episode. Link is in the description. And Kathy, this is the part of the show where I'd love to offer my guests the opportunity to talk about a project they're working on, a cause they believe in, more about their business. So if there's something specific you'd like to discuss, the floor is yours.

Kathy: Like I said, I'm online a lot looking for recipes in such and King Arthur baking. The flour company, they had a thing called Bake for Good. And I was like, huh. And it's just a little thing they started about baking for good things. And then I saw something at my church. There's a, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, there's a St. Agnes Day room and they feed the homeless and the hungry. And so I got involved with them once a month. It was just Wednesday this week. I bring over cupcakes or whatever other things I have. And the people are just so grateful to have a little treat like that. So it's like, it just, I'm, you know, it's my pleasure to do that for them. And it's local people, you know, it's, everybody likes to treat, you know, no matter what their situation is. They'd give them a nice healthy lunch and a little tasty dessert. And I have one other group that I bake for. Sometimes it's called Icing Smiles. It's a national group. And they make cakes for children who were either really ill or for their siblings as well. So I've done cakes for kids who were, you know, have really terrible diseases and they're having a tough time. And I've done some for siblings as well for, you know, cause their kids, they call them super siblings, you know, they're always there in support of their, you know, their brother or sister. So I just like to do what I can and spread a little happiness through cake.

Dan: I absolutely love that. I'll see if I can get some links to those organizations, put them on the website as well. I'll get links to your website. I'll throw that there too. So when people are trying to find out more information about you, they can easily do that. Thank you. Kathy, it's been absolutely awesome having you on Time We Discuss and we learned all about being a home baker.

Kathy: Thank you very much. It was a lot of fun.

Dan: So that was a really, really interesting conversation with Kathy. Let's take a look at some of the highlights. For starters, expect to put in a lot of hours on top of the job that you already have. Now, if you already have a partner that is working full time or you, no, let me rephrase that. If you don't have to work full time and you're doing this as a part-time gig or a side hustle, that is different. However, if you're doing this in conjunction with your already full-time job, you're going to have very long days, very long nights and weekends. One point that I can't overstate enough, Kathy talked about the importance of being organized. She talked about, at least on one occasion, that a cake was requested to be picked up and she didn't have it ready. So you need to make sure that you're organized and have the baked goods ready when your customers are ready for them. You also want to take a look at the types of products that you want to bake. For instance, if you want to bake pies and cheesecake, remember, you cannot do that if you actually have a legit home baking business. You have to stick with different baked goods that do not require a refrigeration. Also, don't forget about the opportunities where you'll have repeat customers. Kathy talked about this one family where she made the cake for the baby shower and the child grew up to be, I think 13 was the number and made a cake every single year. That is a great business model. So you definitely want to try to capitalize on those repeat customers. Similar to that, and she didn't mention this, but similar to that, if you're able to go after a specific niche, if you want to maybe do gluten-free stuff, like that is all you do. You are the gluten-free home baker. That could be a huge advantage. So that is something also to consider. And don't forget different social groups that are out there, your mom's groups, your dad's groups, things like that, where you can easily try to network and get more customers that way. Okay, so let's talk money. When it comes to being a home baker, you can expect this to probably be a part-time gig. More than likely, this will not be your full-time job. When I looked into this a little deeper, if this is your side hustle, where you're kind of like, you're doing it on the side, not taking it very seriously, you know, you can expect to make about $17,000 a year in profit, okay? If you are doing this seriously part-time, okay? You can expect to maybe a little less than double that, about $24,000 a year. And if you're looking to do this full-time, you can probably command in the low 50s. Now, this is going to vary greatly on a number of variables, such as your location, the specialization that you have, and so on and so forth. But just generally speaking, these are the kind of numbers that you can expect, okay? So what do you think? Some good things, some bad things. Is this the best job for you? Let's keep exploring, and I'll see you next time on Time We Discuss.