Home Baking - Earn Money From Home

Bake for Profit Programme

Home baking has become a major source of income for many poor people, especially in South Africa. Learn to Earn is a non-profit organisation created to teach unemployed people to earn money from home. It is situated in Khayalitsha and Hermanus near Cape Town in South Africa. Candidates receive a diploma and the knowledge gained helps them to start their own profitable home business. Other skills such as woodwork and sewing are also taught. The baking for profit course covers areas like:

• Safety and Hygiene
• Measuring Techniques 
• Cooking and Mixing Methods 
• Baking with Yeast 
• Quick flour mixtures

With the high unemployment rate in South Africa, the Bake-for-Profit project is meeting one of the deepest needs in communities throughout the country: the right to earn a living.

All recipes taught have proven over the years to equip the entrepreneur with marketable and affordable products to sell in their respective communities.

Before You Start A Cookie Business - What To Consider

There are some considerations before beginning any type of business even a home-based one such as baking cookies and making candy:

o     Check out the local laws for registering and zoning a home baking business. Health regulations must be taken into consideration when starting a food business from your home. Consult you Local Authority in this regard.

o     Small business tax laws. Now that you are a business, you are subject to different tax exemptions, deductions and payments.

o     Set up a separate work space at home. This could be as simple as using a spare bedroom or den with a door to keep your work separate. If you rely on the telephone a separate phone line can be added.

o     Use on and offline marketing methods to find clients. Start with your immediate circle of friends and relatives. If they like your cookies, it gives you the confidence to get a wider customer base. Internet marketing can follow when you have a proven product.

o     Create a schedule to divide time between work and family. Balancing both is hard. Scheduling time and sticking to it means more gets done and no one is slighted.

o     Start small and develop your business as you acquire knowledge and experience.

o     To start a cookie and candy business, you must get tested recipes that will make you a profit. Steer clear from offers such as “1000 free recipes” or “Best fudge recipe ever”.

o     Remember, you want to make money! To be successful you will have to adopt a professional attitude. Draw up a business plan and do some initial research on items such as packaging, labeling, advertising etc. It is also advisable to draw up a budget of potential income and expenditure – even if it is still early days and you don’t have all the data you might want to have, drawing up a preliminary budget is crucial.

o     Do a “test run” of the recipes that you have chosen to make sure that they produce the right quantity and quality. Keep record of the number of units produced so that you can do a cost analysis at a later stage.

o     Get the prices of the ingredients of each recipe and calculate the unit cost in grams or milliliters. This will make it easy to do a calculation of the profit on each product.

If you are serious to start a cookie business from home, then I suggest that you get this e-guide to help you achieve your goal. All the information that you need is provided in this guide.