Starting a Cake Shed: Why Are Some People Selling Up Already?

I've started noticing two or three cake shed set-ups being advertised for sale every week. The shed, the fridge, the packaging, the equipment — sometimes everything someone bought to get started. And occasionally, I'm seeing people selling before they've even opened.

So does that mean starting a cake shed now is a bad idea?

I don't think it does. There are still plenty of people looking at cake sheds and thinking, I'd love to do that.

But perhaps it's a good time to ask a slightly different question:

What would make your cake shed a success?

Because there isn't one answer.

For some people, success might mean bringing in a bit of extra income each month. For someone else, it might mean spending more time at home while still contributing financially. It might be building something around school hours, creating a business that belongs to you, meeting people in your local community or simply turning something you love doing into an additional income stream.

For me, my cake shed is part of my wider baking business. I love baking, I love that my cakes make people happy and I like that the shed makes me some money. It will never replace the salary I used to earn. My local market simply wouldn't support that, and that's fine because that's not what I need it to do. Plus I could never do that much washing up!

Knowing that makes a huge difference to the decisions I make about my shed.

And I think that's sometimes missing when we look at those gorgeous social media posts of sold-out honesty boxes.

We see the shed.

We see the cakes.

We see the SOLD OUT sign.

What we don't necessarily see is the business behind it.

A successful cake shed business isn't simply a case of baking some lovely things, putting them in a shed and hoping people turn up. You need to understand your customers, work out what they want to buy, price your products properly, manage your time and keep showing up.

And you need to be prepared to learn.

When I started mine, I already had an established baking business, eight years of experience, a local reputation and an existing social media following. That gave me a huge head start. Even so, I opened in the middle of August and took £70 in my first week after spending around £600 getting the shed open.

It took time to build. I opened it five times before I broke even with the initial investment plus all the ingredients and consumables I used for those five sheds. And that was without paying myself a wage for all the time I'd invested in set up and getting all those cakes baked.

That's not a problem if you've planned for it.

It is a problem if you've invested a significant amount of money expecting an instant income.

Your cake shed needs to work for you

This is why I think your "why..." matters so much.

If your goal is to make £500 a month, your business model will look very different from someone who wants to replace a £40,000 salary.

If you want to spend more time with your family, you need to think about how many hours you actually want to spend baking.

If you want to experiment with exciting new products, you need to understand that your customers may prefer the familiar favourites.

If you want to create a reliable additional income, you need to know your numbers and understand what your local market will support.

There isn't a right answer.

But you do need to know what you're trying to achieve.

And if you've already opened your shed and it's not doing what you hoped, that doesn't automatically mean it's time to close your shed and sell your set up. It might be time to go back to the beginning and ask yourself why you started it in the first place. Is the problem the shed itself, or is the way you're running it no longer delivering what you wanted from it?

Maybe you need different products. Different opening hours. A different pricing strategy. A different way of reaching customers. Or perhaps you've discovered that the business you thought you wanted isn't actually the business you enjoy running. That's useful information too.

The important thing is to make that decision based on your numbers, your circumstances and what you actually want or need — rather than because someone else's cake shed seems to be doing brilliantly and you hope yours might too. That's a key metric to your success.

You don't need to copy someone else's cake shed

There are cake shed owners doing this successfully in lots of different ways.

Some have huge demand. Some have small but loyal customer bases. Some use their shed as a significant part of their income. For others, it's one small part of a wider portfolio of work.

And that's the bit I think is worth remembering.

Your cake shed doesn't have to look like anyone else's.

Social media is very good at showing us the pretty shed, the full shelves and the sold-out sign.

It doesn't show us everything else.

So take inspiration. Ask questions. Learn from people who are already doing it.

But don't use somebody else's business as the measure of whether yours is working or not.

Before you spend £600 on a cake shed set up...

If you're still at the "I think I'd love to start a cake shed" stage, this is exactly the point at which I think it's worth doing some proper thinking. Not because I want to put you off. Quite the opposite.

I've learned the hard way that sometimes a small investment upfront can save you from a very expensive mistake. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of buying the shed, the fridge and all the kit, before you've really thought about what you're trying to build and whether your local market will support it. (One fine example of this is all the bits and bobs for a children's subscription box business I was going to start during lockdown that are still gathering dust in my spare room.)

That's why I'm bringing three experienced cake shed owners together for So You Want to Start a Cake Shed?, a live workshop coming in September.

You'll hear from myself, Bronya Seifert who started The Cake Shed Community, and Ami Ketley from Baked By Ami. We all our sheds in different ways and have very different measures of success.

We'll share what we've learned, the things we'd think about before starting again and the practical decisions you'll need to consider as you work out whether a cake shed is right for you.

You'll also get access to the replay and a collection of resources to help you put what you've learned into practice.

Because yes, running a cake shed takes work.

But it can also be enormously rewarding, a lot of fun and a brilliant way to create an additional income stream from something you already love doing.

The trick is to decide what success looks like for you first — and then build the business to get you there.

Get Priority Access

Join the priority list for "So You Want to Start a Cake Shed?" here

One last thing question

Does a cake shed make money?

A cake shed can make money, but whether it makes enough money for you depends on your products, prices, customer base, location, costs and how much time you're prepared to put into it. That's why I don't think there's a useful answer to the question "Are cake sheds profitable?" without first asking what you need your cake shed to achieve.

Further Reading

And if you want to find out more about some of the things that you'll need to do to get up and running, why not take a look at these posts:

If you're starting up and haven't registered with your local council, it's less scary than you think. Find out more here: Why Haven’t You Registered Your Baking Business Yet? It’s Less Scary Than You Think.

Understanding how to price your bakes is really important if you want to make sure you can afford to pay yourself and grow your business. Check out: Cake Pricing with Real Numbers: What it Actually Costs to Bake a Cake

And if you'd like to hear from Bronya, why not check out this brilliant article: Five Mistakes to Avoid in your Cake Business