Confita
Week one: the legal check
Every US state lets home bakers sell somehow, through what are called cottage food laws. What changes by state is the list of allowed foods, where you can sell them, whether there is an annual sales cap, and what paperwork comes first. Some states want a permit and a kitchen inspection. Others ask for nothing beyond correct labels.
So before you buy boxes or print menus, search your state’s name plus cottage food law and open the page from your state department of agriculture or health. That page is the source of truth. Read the approved food list first: most baked goods qualify because they are shelf-stable, but anything that needs refrigeration, like cheesecake or cream-filled pastries, often does not.
Budget an evening for this, not a month. Confirm your foods qualify, do the food-handler course if your state asks for one, and make one label template with your name and address, ingredients, allergens, and the home-kitchen disclosure most states require. The cottage food guide on this site walks the whole legal picture in more depth.
Decide what you sell first
The instinct is to offer everything you can bake. Resist it. A first menu of 3 to 5 items you can repeat on a weeknight beats a 20-item menu that needs a different grocery run for every order.
Pick a signature item, the thing friends already ask you to bring. One signature plus a couple of supporting items is a real menu: maybe your cinnamon rolls, two cookie flavors by the dozen, and one celebration cake size. Narrow means you photograph each item once, cost it once, and get faster every week, which quietly raises your hourly rate without raising prices.
Custom work can come later, once your quoting process exists. Saying not yet to a sculpted cake request in month one is not lost money. It is dodged chaos.
Price for profit from day one
Price every item with the full formula before you publish it: ingredients including the box and board, your hours at a real hourly rate, a share of overhead like power and packaging, and a profit margin on top.
The trap to avoid is the one almost every new baker falls into. A cake takes 4 hours and gets priced at $40 because that feels like what people would pay. Subtract ingredients and that is under $10 an hour for skilled work. Worse, raising prices later on customers you trained at $40 is much harder than starting right.
You do not have to build a spreadsheet. The free cake pricing calculator runs the whole formula with your numbers, and the cake pricing guide goes deeper on every line. Set your prices once, write them down, and put them in public. A public price list ends haggling before it starts.
Set up your order channel before your first post
Here is what happens after your first popular post. Someone comments asking the price. Someone else DMs about gluten-free. A coworker texts your phone. Your aunt relays an order from her neighbor. Each of those turns into six more messages: what date, what size, which flavors, any allergies, how do I pay you, where do I pick it up.
Six messages times a handful of orders is an evening gone, and one missed detail costs more than time. A wrong pickup date eats a Saturday. A missed allergy answer is far worse than that. This is the part to set up before you promote anything: one place where orders land complete.
Whatever you use, it needs four things: a menu with real prices, the questions you would otherwise ask in chat, your deposit policy in writing, and your pickup windows. A shop link like Confita bundles all four into one link customers open in the browser, with your questions answered and reference photos attached before you ever reply. But even a paper form beats memory.
Your first 10 customers
Skip the ads. Your first customers are people who already trust you: friends, family, coworkers, the parents in your group chat. Announce a soft launch with three photos, your prices, and one pickup date. Friends-and-family orders are real practice for your packaging, your timing, and your nerve when you say the price out loud.
Then pick one local Facebook group or Nextdoor neighborhood and show up weekly, same day, same format: what you are baking, the price, the pickup window, the link. One channel worked consistently beats five channels worked randomly, and neighbors who see you every Thursday start planning around you.
Do not chase viral. A reel with 40 views from people in your zip code is worth more than 40,000 views from people who cannot pick up a cake. Daylight photos, honest prices, and on-time handoffs are what turn the first 10 customers into the next 10.
