Sell Your Baking at 13: Bake Sales, Markets and Orders

What you actually do

You bake one thing well, in batches, and you sell it three ways. At a bake sale or a market table. By the dozen, to people who order ahead. And to one or two regulars who want the same box every Friday.

The mistake most people make is baking six different things. Pick one. The kid who sells one great chocolate chip cookie is remembered. The kid with a table of nine different squares is a bake sale.

What it costs to start

The ingredients for your first two batches, about $20 to $30. Paper bags or boxes and a roll of stickers to write the name on, about $10 to $20. A tablecloth and a handwritten sign, which you can borrow.

Before you buy anything, cost your recipe. Write down every ingredient, how much the bag or carton cost, and how much of it one batch uses. A batch of 24 cookies usually costs somewhere between $6 and $10 in ingredients. So one cookie costs you about 30 or 40 cents. Every price you set from here starts from that number.

Find your first order this weekend

1. Bake one batch of your one thing. Put six in a bag with a sticker that says what it is and your first name.
2. Give three bags away. One to a neighbour, one to a teacher, one to a family friend who likes to talk. Ask each of them one question: "If I sold these by the dozen, would you buy some, and what would you pay?"
3. Whoever says a number is your first customer. Take their order for next weekend, and write it down.

That's it. You've tested the product, tested the price and found a customer for the cost of one batch of flour and butter.

What to charge

If a cookie costs you 40 cents, selling a dozen for $5 leaves you 20 cents each after ingredients. That's not a business. It's a hobby that pays for itself.

Charge for your time and your skill. A dozen of something good, made by hand, from a real kitchen, is worth $12 to $18 in most Canadian towns, and people happily pay more for a box that looks nice. At $15 a dozen, with $5 of ingredients and $1 of packaging, you keep $9. Ten dozen over a month is $90 in your pocket.

Check the price at the nearest farmers' market before you settle on it. The people selling there have already done the research for you.

Rules and staying safe

This is the important section, so read it with a parent.

Selling food is different from selling anything else, because a mistake can make someone sick. What you may cook at home and sell differs by province, so ask a parent to check what yours says. Two examples:

• In Ontario, a change that took effect in 2020 made it easier to sell low-risk foods prepared at home. Ontario's own guide describes low-risk food as food that doesn't need to be kept at a controlled temperature, and gives baked goods as an example. Cream, custard and meat fillings are not in that group.
• In BC, lower-risk home-baked foods can be sold at temporary food markets. The table has to show a sign saying the food was made in a kitchen that is not inspected by a regulatory authority.

Other provinces have their own versions, and school bake sales often have their own rules on top. Ask a parent to check your province and your school before you sell.

Whatever the province, four things are always true:

• Wash your hands, tie hair back, and clean the counter before you start.
• Write every ingredient on the label. Someone with a nut or egg allergy needs to know, and "cookies" isn't enough.
• Don't sell anything that needs to stay cold.
• Take payment in cash, or by e-transfer to a parent's account. Nothing goes on a card.

On taxes: nobody has to register for GST/HST until they sell more than $30,000 in a year. A cookie business in Grade 8 is not going to get there.

What Aisha would do

Aisha is 14 and lives in Ottawa. Her thing is a date and cardamom cookie her family makes for Eid, which nobody at her school has tasted before. That's her whole value proposition, and she wouldn't change it to be more like the cookies in the store.

She'd start with the two families her mum already trades food with, cost the recipe properly, and price at $15 a dozen. Then she'd ask the organiser of the winter market at the community centre what a table costs and what paperwork they want. She'd bring her mum to that conversation, because the organiser will ask for a parent anyway.

When it stops being fun

You're up at six on a Saturday because you promised eight dozen by ten. The oven runs hot and you burn a tray. Someone at the market wants to know exactly which brand of butter you use, and someone else asks if you can do a gluten-free version by Tuesday.

Orders are the good problem here. The bad one is saying yes to everything. Decide your one product and your maximum order before the first market, and you'll still like baking in March.