Top 5 tips to creating a successful caking business

There are a few things I have found that help to contribute towards running a successful and popular business these are just some which I hope will help you on your way to a happy and fruitful future in the caking world.

1. Always engage with your customers and potential customers
2. Create an engaging website
3. Create your own signature style or range
4. Give more than the customer expects
5. Create a good working ethic with other bakers

Always engage with your customers and potential customers

Answer voicemails, emails, texts any other way someone may have contacted you.  Ignoring a customer, or potential customer is going to give you negative recommendations.  Always be friendly and professional in your replies and correspondence.  This will often be your first point of contact with many potential customers and either being slow in responding to them will send them in the direction of another baker, if you are snowed under and struggling with your correspondence, at least send them a short rely to acknowledge that you have received their request and give a time-scale in which you will reply, but ensure that you do keep to this.

Create an engaging website

Building a successful website will not happen overnight, it will take time to grow and evolve.  Use plenty of good quality images to ensure your site is visually pleasing , but do not be tempted to use other cake makers pictures as examples of cakes you could make.  This is a real no-no in the cake decorating world (in fact in any field) and you will soon find yourself being targeted with lawyers letters - even digital imagery on the internet is copyrighted and the intellectual property of the owner.  In fact it is blatantly obvious to anyone looking at your site that you are not the creator of the 'borrowed' cakes.  Make it easy to navigate, the fewer clicks needed to get to the information needed the better. - Watch out for a blog on this in the near future.

Create your own signature style or range


Creating you own signature style or even a range of cakes will catch the attention of, not only customers, but also other cake makers.  With the increasing interest in baking and decorating cakes you need to stand out from your competition, maybe your website will reflect your style too, taken a tour around Google, Flickr, pinterest and other media and note what it is that always catches your eye, what makes it stand out, do you have a favourite genre, are you drawn more towards novelty cakes or pretty floral cakes, do you like Retro and vintage, or more of a country style.  All these things can influence you in your design for a cake.  Make a few sketches of some designs in styles that influence you and if you have a customer who is stuck for ideas try one of these out them .... again watch out for another future blog on this subject.

Give more than the customer expects


What could be better than a customer coming to collect their cake, than for their jaw to drop at the value they have had for their money, again customer satisfaction, this will bring them back and have them recommending you to everyone else.  So think about what you can do to get this reaction from them, what can you do to the cake visually to make it stand out, make use of the board and if possible include a few decorations on there.  Putting a Teddy on the top or a similar decoration consider the size of the cake and the proportions, a little 2" Teddy sitting on top of the vastness of a 12" cake is not going to give the customer the WOW factor they were hoping for .... again it looks like another blog in the making :-) 


Create a good working ethic with other bakers

Creating a network of contacts with other local and possibly other national bakers is not always a bad thing.  What happens when you are unwell and have an order to get out, don't always think of them as competition but as a friend.  

Happy Baking and sugarpasting
see you soon

Rhu