my sister's and i want to start a cupcake business. how would we go about it?

Question

we really want to start small and gradually get bigger. any tips or anything??

Answer 1

If this is your first business venture, I would strongly recommend that you talk to a business counselor before you do anything especially spend money. I'd call the local office of SCORE (go to http://www.score.org and input your zip code to find the chapter nearest you), the advice is FREE. Ask for someone who has a background in foods and they'll try their best to match you with the right counselor.

The counselor at SCORE will most likely advise you to write a business plan which is very good advice because it will force you to dig out all of the start up details and the costs of starting a cupcake business and force you to also understand all of the aspects of this business including the customers you'll concentrate on (your market ) and how you'll get them to find out and want to come to eat your fabulous cupcakes.

You also have to have food handling licenses, the right zoning, the right city and county licenses and permits and you have to be skilled at negotiating with your landlord about who'll stand the cost of the build-out or the changes to the premises to make it ready for your look and feel.

You also have to worry about the normal business planning and management issues related to starting up any business.
Take a look and read some of the articles at:
http://www.ychange.com/small-business-consulting-articles.html
especially the ones about a business plan and starting a business. Also try their Blog and their Bulletin Board.
Hope this helped.

Answer 2

Depending on where you live you could start out by making up several dozen cupcakes and taking them to local office complexes or school offices (for the staff room) and speak to someone about providing them weekly or bi-weekly for the staff break room.

Don't price them too low, either. You should be able to get at least $1 a piece for them - again, depending on your region.
People have a hard time resisting when temptation is sitting in front of them. Just make sure they really are yummy so that you will ensure repeat sales. :-)

A second idea that you may want to consider is to build an online business dealing with cupcakes. You could build a website all about the origin of cupcakes, recipe ideas, decorating ideas, themed cupcakes for special occasions, best types of cupcake baking pans, etc.

You don't even actually have to sell the different products when you first start out, you can sell advertising on your site to larger companies that do provide them through their affiliate programs, etc. Something to think about.

That is what I do with my chocolate candy site. You can look at it and see what I mean if you like - the link is in my profile.
There are also some free ebooks and other info. on how to do this if you want to consider this option, too.

Why not do them both? :-)
Have fun - I hope you do great!

Answer 3

There are a ton of laws that govern selling food for human consumption, so be sure you find out what they are in your location and follow them. Your local health department would be a place to start to get info on requirements.