Most people often stray away from turning their hobbies into full-time jobs because they fear that doing so will affect their passion. But while there is some truth to that belief, there’s also a chance that you’ll find joy in the process of monetizing your passions. After all, you’ll be doing it alongside your primary job.
Balancing your work and side business may seem complicated, but it’s completely doable once you get the hang of it. Of course, getting past the learning curve may take a while, so you’ll have to set your priorities straight if this is truly something you want to pursue. Besides, you can always start small.
So, if you’re thinking about turning your passion for baking into a business, you’ll have to create a solid business plan. This piece of document will guide you and keep you on the right track, which is why it’s considered one of the biggest steps you can take in entrepreneurship. Here are the four aspects you must focus on for your business plan:
Operations
Baking is a manually laborious and time-consuming job. That’s precisely why you have to plan your operations accordingly before you start telling the world that you’re open for business. Without a solid business plan to back you up, you might burn out faster than the cookies you forgot to take out of the oven.
The plan for your operations will tackle what kind of equipment you’ll need to use in making your products. Of course, this will include a heavy-use oven, weighing scale, stand mixer, and other devices that are essential to baking. You might want to find professional oven cleaners that you can depend on for regular maintenance, especially once you start accepting orders.
You’ll also have to figure out where to source your baking ingredients, packaging, and decorative materials because these are cheaper when bought in bulk. This could be an excellent opportunity to start partnerships with other local business owners in your community, but only if it will be beneficial to you in the long run.
Marketing
After you’ve decided how to operate your business, the next aspect you’ll have to focus on is marketing your products. Luckily, this could be the easiest part of making the business plan because you have the internet and everything that it comes with at your disposal. So, you can use social media platforms for marketing your products.
It could also be wise to look into local SEO strategies, seeing as it would be easier to sell your products to the people in your community before branching out to neighbouring towns or cities. If you have big hopes for your business, then you should start thinking about expanding your market once you’ve established your foothold in the local community.
Logistics
One of the biggest challenges in running an online bakery is that your products have to get to your customers the same way they bought them from your store. This means that you have to iron out the logistic details of your online business, especially since you’ll be selling perishable food products.
You’ll have to talk travel distance and time into account before accepting orders. This will also be the best time to decide what kind of baked goods you’re planning to sell because each product has a specific handling method. For instance, if you’re to sell cakes, you’ll have to factor in the refrigeration time and temperature control when delivering the goods to your customers.
Finance
Lastly, you’ll have to plan out your finances before starting your online business. As you should already know, you’ll have to shell out and spend money first before you can start raking in profits. The amount of seed money you’ll need will depend on how big of a market you want to cater to, so you have to finalize those details as well.
Then, you can take the seed money from your savings, or you can apply for a small business loan. Whichever financing method you choose to go with, you’ll have to make sure that you won’t be negatively affected if in case the business falls under. After all, you’re starting this business as a way to earn more income, not to lose money.
Once you’ve ironed out the details of your business plan, you can move on to getting your business off of the ground. Of course, this is in no way a comprehensive guide to starting a business. Still, hopefully, it can give you enough information about being an online entrepreneur so that you won’t have to find your way blindly in the dark.
