online cake shop business plan

How to Start a Cake Business From Home in 2024

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If you’re a pastry chef or a passionate baker looking to kickstart a cake business from home and make money online, you’re in the right place.

Starting a home bakery business doesn’t have to be overly complicated. With the right tools, a solid business plan, and proper guidance, you’ll have a strong foundation to begin.

👋 In this guide, we’ll walk you through all the tools and platforms you can use to successfully launch your online home cake business this year. 

We’ll cover:

• The basics of an online cake business.
• Setting up your WordPress website.
• Installing and setting up WooCommerce.

By the end, you’ll have a neat website to share your specialty cakes and designs with more than just your family, friends, or the local neighborhood. Then, get them to order.

Ready to get started? Let’s begin with the basics of an online cake business.

Start Your Cake Business With Orderable

The WooCommerce plugin designed to help businesses take orders online – with no added fees!

The basics of an online cake business

There are certain preliminary steps you have to take right from the beginning to set your online cake business up for success from day one. The first step is usually to do market research to determine if you have customers to start with. 

Conduct thorough market research

Without a customer, you don’t have a business. So, the main goal of conducting thorough market research is to help you find an answer to this question: who’s your customer?

This comes after deciding on a specific niche or the type of cakes you want to specialize in. Cakes like birthday cakes, wedding cakes, cupcakes, or specialty designs (e.g., vegan, gluten-free, custom cakes).

Generally, the target customers for your niche can be families, friends, the neighborhood, event p lanners, wedding clients, parties, and so on. You’ll be researching to know exactly who your customers and target market are, their location, preferences, etc. You can then adjust accordingly based on the results you get from asking around, online surveys, etc.

Other critical aspects you must analyze during this research include your competition, what they offer, their prices, and the cake business trends within your locality. Look for gaps you can fill, such as unique flavors, custom designs, or dietary-specific cakes.

Next, use this information to create a solid business plan.

Write a solid business plan

Your business plan should outline your goals, target market, pricing strategy, and financial projections. 

It acts as a roadmap. So, think about your business name and structure, startup costs, unique selling points, menu pricing strategies for profitability, etc. It also includes your marketing strategy to acquire new customers. For example, using emails , business cards, partnerships, or social media platforms like Facebook pages, community groups, influencers , etc.

Overall, a business plan gives you clarity from the start. It can put you in the right direction if it’s written properly. It doesn’t have to be formal or a long document, either.

Closely focus on your startup costs

When writing a business plan, estimate the expenses needed to start your small business as well. This includes costs for sourcing high-quality ingredients , home kitchen equipment, packaging, website setup, marketing, delivery logistics, etc.

Planning for these upfront costs will help you avoid financial surprises later on. Plus, it can simplify calculating your cake menu pricing strategy.

Note: Lock down all the legal stuff earlier to comply with local laws. Check if your state has a cottage food law. If not, obtain the necessary permits and licenses to operate a food business. This includes a food handler certification from the local health department, a business license, liability insurance, and business registration. 

With all these in mind, let’s create a WordPress website to launch your new business.

Setting up your WordPress website

The best platform to use to set up a strong online presence is WordPress.

📈 Why is it the best choice? WordPress powers more than 43% of all websites on the internet, which speaks for its reliability, user-friendliness, and widespread use.

It generously offers limitless design options to create, edit, modify, manage, and publish your own cake website without touching code. Free themes are available for starters. But if you’re looking for more functionality, you can choose from the thousands of premium third-party WordPress themes that can cost anywhere between $25 and $299. 

Note: WordPress is free, but you need to purchase a domain name and a hosting plan for it to work. Read this guide on installing and setting up a WordPress website in five easy steps.

Once your WordPress website is up and running, you can monetize it how you want. This is unlike other platforms for building websites.

Other compelling reasons to use WordPress

Other compelling reasons to build with WordPress include:

• Full data ownership. With WordPress, you own all your files and can take them to any hosting provider that supports WordPress. 
• Unmatched flexibility and customization. WordPress offers great flexibility right out of the box. Beginners can customize their WordPress sites as they please to fit their style. This includes switching to other templates after the website goes live to improve site security, user experience, fonts, colors, etc.
• A vast library of plugins. WordPress provides various plugins you may need later on to boost your site’s functionality, such as a page builder plugin. Most of these plugins are covered in this guide.
• Better search visibility. WordPress sites are SEO-friendly. With the world’s most popular Yoast SEO plugin, you can easily improve your site’s visibility on search engines.

Note: Mostly, you’ll want to pay attention to local SEO like near-me searches to target those customers within your locality. It includes simple techniques like completing your Google Business Profile and more.

• Scalable ecommerce integration. WordPress lacks built-in ecommerce features, but you can easily integrate it with a robust ecommerce solution like WooCommerce. 

We’ll use this WooCommerce platform to turn your WordPress site into a cake or pastry shop that can display products, fulfill orders, receive payments, etc. But before we get into this, let’s go through picking a design for your cake business first.

It matters a lot.

Picking your cake business website design

Pick a website design template that’s specific to your cake business niche. This will help you highlight what matters most: your cakes.

Visual representation is incredibly important as your visitors judge your website in a fraction of a second based on how it looks. It can determine whether customers will order from you or leave.

Overall, themes can be free or paid. They are customizable to give your website a unique look and allow it to function differently.

One of the best free themes to get you started is WooCommerce Storefront. It’s simple and focuses on showing your cakes in a grid layout, single product pages with add-to-cart buttons, prices, descriptions, etc. Plus, it’s optimized for the WooCommerce platform.

Starter templates from Kadence

You can get a bit advanced with starter templates from Kadence for professional-looking themes that are more tailored to your brand and business. These templates give you more flexibility when customizing your website. 

Here are two Kadence templates that stand out:

• Butcher shop – This theme showcases food items in an appealing grid layout, with easy integration for local orders or deliveries. Its simplicity makes it adaptable to any food business and replaces images with cakes and descriptions. 
• Resto – This template is optimized for ecommerce, food-related business, and local/pickup delivery. It can be easily adapted to tell your story, show unique cake decorations in a clean design, an easy-to-edit menu for ordering, etc. 

Whichever theme you choose, you can always customize it to your needs as long as it can connect with WooCommerce. 

Now, let’s talk about the ecommerce section of your website. So that you know, some templates like Butcher Shop install WooCommerce on your behalf.

Install and set up WooCommerce

Installing WooCommerce on your WordPress website turns it into a fully functional online shop. 

People will be able to order cakes from your online cake shop. In addition, WooCommerce provides a comprehensive suite of features for easily selling your products online. Some of these features include:

• Ecommerce functionality , including product listings, shopping cart, and checkout processes.
• Product management allows you to easily add, edit, and organize products with various attributes like prices, images, and descriptions.
• Secure payment gateways , including credit cards, PayPal, cash on delivery, etc. This way customers can choose their preferred way to pay.
• Flexible shipping methods and rates, 
• Built-in analytics and reporting to track sales, customer behavior, inventory, and more. 

Installing WooCommerce

Here’s how you install the WooCommerce plugin: 

• Login to your WordPress dashboard.
• Go to Plugins followed by Add New .
• Type in WooCommerce in the search field at the top right-hand corner of your screen.
• Find the WooCommerce plugin and click the Install Now button right next to the plugin. 
• After a few seconds, this button will turn blue and read Activate . Click this button to activate the plugin.

You’ll now see the WooCommerce setup wizard that will walk you through the rest of the setup process, such as customizing the basic settings, currency options, payment methods, etc. The whole process is super simple and only takes a few minutes.

Setting up WooCommerce

Overall, the WooCommerce setup wizard will guide you through the following settings:

• Enter your cake business details, including location, currency options, and product type.
• Select payment methods such as PayPal, Stripe, and bank account transfers, among other options.
• Create shipping options by setting up zones, rates, and local pickup.
• Add products and define their display, dimensions, and weight.
• Consider additional features like automated tax calculation and marketing tools.

Creating important store pages

Most importantly, remember to create these important store pages:

• A Shop page will display all your products.
• The Cart page, where your customers can adjust their order before proceeding to checkout.
• The Checkout page is where customers can choose the shipping/delivery method and make the final payment.

The My Account page is like a profile page for registered customers. It shows customers their order history, contact information, and other details.

While WooCommerce can accept orders, it doesn’t do enough to streamline the ordering experience for food businesses . With the help of a robust online ordering system, you can turn this around and provide the most convenient ordering experience possible for your customers. This includes additional benefits like effective order management, customizable menus, upselling opportunities, etc.

The best online ordering system for WooCommerce is the Orderable plugin.

Introducing Orderable: Your home baking business’ best friend

Orderable is designed to give small business owners like you full control over how orders are placed, managed, and fulfilled in your shop. It achieves this by adding a robust online ordering system directly to your newly-created WordPress site.

The whole purpose of this ordering system is to make it easier and convenient for potential customers to order cakes anytime, anywhere. For instance, customers close to your place, like the neighbors, can collect their custom cakes in person at your home. Those who prefer their cakes delivered can choose that option instead.

So, this system doesn’t just improve the ordering experience. This flexibility can expand your potential customer base by attracting new customers like nearby residents who haven’t heard or didn’t know your business yet.

We’ve only scratched the surface. Let’s see how Orderable makes this happen as we get it up and running step-by-step. 

Setting up Orderable

Setting up Orderable begins by installing it first. Go ahead and purchase Orderable from the official website: orderable.com . You’ll be sent two plugins, one free and another Pro version.

Then, follow these easy steps to install it:

• Go to Plugins > Add New from your WordPress dashboard.
• Click the Upload Plugin button at the top of the page.
• Then upload the .zip file you were sent containing Orderable (the free version). Click Install Now . Then click Activate Plugin on the next page.
• To install Orderable Pro, repeat the steps above by uploading the Orderable Pro version at step 3.

Activating the plugin takes you to its Setup Wizard. On this setup screen, enter your home cake business information, select if you offer delivery or pickup, the days of the week you’re open, and that’s it.

Let’s discuss these store settings from the Orderable dashboard in more detail.

Set up your store settings

In the store settings , you can set up shop hours and refine your delivery/collection schedule, holiday schedule, offer ASAP delivery, etc. Doing this can help maintain control over your operations, manage customer expectations, and balance business and personal time. 

• Go to Orderable > Settings and click on the Store Settings tab.
• Scroll down to the Open Hours section, where you can select the days and timeframes when your cake shop is open. You can even set multiple timeslots per day.

• In the Service Hours section, you can set different hours for delivery and pickup, separate from your shop’s regular open hours. This allows you to offer flexible service times, such as having specific delivery hours while offering pickups at other times.

• You’ll also find other additional order settings for ASAP delivery , lead time , preorder days , and holiday scheduling for when you want to be free.
• Click Save Changes if you’re satisfied with the changes you’ve made.

Add cake products to your shop page

We can do this in WooCommerce before we can create mouthwatering menu layouts using Orderable.

• Go to Products > Add New on the WordPress dashboard.
• This page is where you add all your cake product information. Everything from the names, prices, product categories, descriptions, high-quality images, and more.
• Once you’re happy with all the information you’ve added, scroll up to the top of the page and click the blue Publish button.

Create your cake products menu layout using Orderable

Generally, these product layouts will display all products in a menu-style layout so customers can pick and choose what they want to add to their order. Follow these steps to create your menu layout:

• Go to Orderable > Product Layouts and click the Add New button at the top of the page.

• Categories. Select which categories of products you’d like to include in the layout from the dropdown menu.
• Display. Next, you can select the type of layout you want in the Display dropdown. You can pick either a Grid or a List. You’ll get a preview each time you choose a selection.
• Sections. In this dropdown, you can decide how you want each category displayed. Each option will help customers navigate your product layout a little better.
• Images. You’ll change the layout to display your product images by clicking the checkbox next to Images.
• Clickable Card. When checked, customers can click on the whole product ‘card’ rather than just the Select button.
• Labels. If you have Orderable Pro, you’ll be able to add product labels to your products. This way, you can let customers know which products are gluten-free, vegan, Halal, and so much more.
• Once you’re happy with your layout, scroll to the top of the page and click the blue Publish button in the Publish section on the right. 

Up to this point, your cake shop is already set up, But there are other critical aspects you have to get right to make the most out of your cake shop. Orderable lets you tailor your shop so that it does its job perfectly.

Tailoring your online cake shop with Orderable

Tailoring your cake shop requires you to optimize certain features so that it works harder and streamlines your operations. This involves paying close attention to things like the menu design, functionality, and other features that highlight your cakes and improve the ordering experience for customers until checkout.

Orderable provides various customization options to help you polish these features effectively and achieve your goal.

Ready-made menu layouts that make your cakes pop

Visual presentation or appeal is everything if you want to sell cakes on your online menu. Overall, people are drawn to cakes that look beautiful and appetizing. Orderable’s ready-made menu layouts organize your cake products in a clean, simple, and eye-catching format you can fully customize. Customize elements like the color, fonts, design, etc.

This format showcases high-quality cake images with product labels, descriptions, prices, add-ons, allergen and nutritional info, etc. This makes it easy for customers to browse, select, and place orders quickly.

• Use dietary and promotional product labels. Labels quickly inform users about a cake’s features while they’re browsing. Dietary labels , for example, highlight allergens or options like gluten-free, vegan, or nut-free to customers who prefer these options and quickly order.
• Promotional labels such as “New” or “Limited Edition” can draw attention to special or seasonal cakes and encourage quick purchases.
• Add a table of nutritional information. To include basic nutritional info like calories, sugar, and allergen details (e.g., nuts, dairy) next to each cake on your menu for health-conscious customers.

Create flexible delivery and pickup timeslots

Orderable allows you to create realistic timeslots and add them as a customizable date picker or calendar at the checkout page. You’re in full control of your delivery schedule. For example, you can:

• Customize your delivery schedule with flexible settings. For example, define specific delivery days, set holidays, lead times, or closed periods, and allocate flexible time slots per day.
• Limit the number of orders you can fulfill per delivery slot depending on your delivery capacity. The more orders you can fulfill in a day the higher the cake sales.
• Provide flexible delivery options including pickup option, same-day delivery, next-day delivery, ASAP delivery, preorder days, etc.
• Charge customizable delivery fees for those who select delivery services.
• Set a holiday schedule. Prevent orders on holidays or choose when your store is closed.

Customers can freely select their preferred order delivery date and time from the date picker and wait patiently for you to deliver on time. If you perfectly slot specific dates and times, you can increase customer satisfaction, increase sales, reduce failed deliveries, delays, rescheduling, etc. 

Quick checkout

Upgrade the default WooCommerce checkout with one designed specifically for your cake baking business. Orderable’s checkout process is quick. Customers can quickly confirm their order in the order summary section. Then, they’ll enter contact, billing, shipping, and payment info before they can place an order.

During checkout, customers can freely leave a special request/instruction on how to prepare their cakes. These requests will pop up on a live order screen on your tablet, smartphone, or desktop computer for prepping in your home kitchen.

Personalized order management screen

Orderable provides a live order view system where you can view and manage orders in real-time. It captures accurate order details, including order number, date, status, customer name, address, total price, service, due date/time, special requests/preferences and instructions, and more.

If you have an emergency or run out of ingredients, you can pause/resume orders directly from the live order view screen.

In this manner, this system ensures your home kitchen runs smoothly from cake preparation to delivery.

Boosting sales and enhancing customer satisfaction with Orderable

Orderable also provides a range of features to help increase average order value and customer satisfaction in the process. 

• It’s commission-free. Orderable doesn’t charge per transaction. Every dollar you make stays with you. This can be a huge benefit for cake bakers with tight margins.
• Checkout tipping. Add tip prompts at the checkout and increase your average order value. Customize default tip amounts or offer a custom tip as determined by the customer.
• Order bumps . This cross-selling feature encourages customers to buy by suggesting additional items, like mini cupcakes, cookies, or gift cards, directly in the floating cart widget. These recommendations promote impulse buying.
• Product add-ons. Offer add-ons like fondants, cake decorations, buttercream, special toppings, or extra layers. Charge additional fees should you wish to. 

Increase customer satisfaction with Orderable

Features like add-ons or order bumps don’t increase sales only but also increase customer satisfaction. Generally, Orderable lets you increase customer satisfaction in the following ways:

• Custom menus for personalized cakes. With Orderable, the menus you create let customers customize their orders with different flavors, gift wrappings, fillings, and add-ons like toppings, cake decorations, fondants, etc. If customers can place personalized orders, it will most likely increase their satisfaction.
• App-like design for mobile ordering. Most people order online through their phones. Using Orderable makes it easy for these customers to browse the menu and place their orders on their smartphones, anywhere, and have a blast ordering experience.​
• Customizable order statuses and notifications. Keep your customers informed and engaged throughout the order process with customizable order statuses and notifications. Orderable connects with popular messaging apps like email, WhatsApp, and SMS so that you can send updates on order status, delivery confirmations, and more. 

Other features like dietary labels, nutritional and allergen info, etc also boost your customer experience in part.

Learn how to start a cake business from home today

Starting your own cake business from home is an exciting opportunity to turn your baking passion into a profitable venture.

But you need to plan properly, understand your target market, and set up a website with WordPress and WooCommerce to get things rolling smoothly from day one. It is way more affordable beginning this way than renting a physical space for your cake shop.

Using Orderable enhances your cake shop with a robust online ordering system. It helps you create a mouthwatering menu, fully control your delivery/collection schedule, and manage orders efficiently. This plugin provides all the features required to capture a customer’s attention, get them to order quickly, and quickly checkout in the shortest time possible.

Get your website up, use the right tools, and turn your cake-making passion into a success with Orderable.

Gina Lucia is our in-house Content Manager at Orderable. She writes articles, user guides, technical documentation, and creates videos on everything WooCommerce and Orderable.

Gina has been working in the WordPress/WooCommerce space since 2012 when she developed WordPress websites for clients large and small.

For the past 8 years, she’s been writing about everything WordPress and WooCommerce, becoming an expert in what makes a WooCommerce store succeed.

When not writing, Gina loves to tend to her vegetable garden, read, or travel to mainland Europe.

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