Common Mistakes Home Bakers Make
Running your own at-home baking business isn’t always easy, and all sorts of things can go wrong. All you can do then is learn from your mistakes and change the way you do things so the same thing doesn’t happen again. Here is a list of some of the common mistakes home baking businesses make. Hopefully, reading them will help prevent these things from happening to you.

Five Common Home Baking Business Mistakes

1. Not coming to the realization that you are in business – It’s so easy to get sidetracked and forget that this isn’t just a hobby anymore. You’re now here to make money and make other people happy. Basically, you need to have the mindset of a business owner and think in a whole different way.

2. Not keeping track of all your expenses – Since it’s so early on in your business career, it’s easy to have the mindset that getting the ingredients for your baking isn’t part of your expenses. As soon as you start making money off of your baked goods, you need to keep track of every single expense. Even if you don’t believe that you’ll make the money back any time soon, it’s a good habit to get into as a new business owner. Writing everything down even makes you feel more like you own a business, so this helps in getting you in the correct mindset faster. It will help with taxes too.

3. Having too many worries about your competition – You always need to be aware of who your competition is, but you can’t be putting all of your focus and stress on this. You have other things to be concerned about to ensure the success of your new business. Instead of spending time stressing over the competition, spend that time on marketing and making your products.

4. Waiting for customers to appear out of nowhere – You aren’t going to get customers by just standing around. You have to make your business known by using advertisements, using the tools provided to you by social media, and talking to people. It isn’t enough to be great at what you do; you must get out there and make connections with people.

Bake sales and trade shows are a great way to get your name and product out there. Also important to note is that you cannot heavily rely on your action plan. Sometimes it pays off to venture outside the box and try new ways of advertising and letting people know about your business.

5. Not knowing how to price products – Pricing your homemade goods is a hard skill to master. You obviously don’t want to make your prices so high that people won’t want to purchase what you have to offer, but you don’t want the price to be too low because then you’ll be losing money. Don’t get nervous when you first start out and people ask about your prices. It’s a bad habit to start applying discounts to everyone that comes in to buy your product. Word will get around that you’re a “discounter” and you’ll never make enough money to stay in business.

Starting a new business is daunting but everything will get easier with time. Try to avoid making these common mistakes and everything will be just fine.