I know this is a rather opinionated question, but how do I know if I am skillful enough to be competitive with my surrounding market? I have visited the websites of local bakeries and some are far more skilled, others, not and others, I am unsure. There are no bakeries in my city but we are small and very close to a larger, neighboring city. For anyone who knows the area, I am in Madison, AL and we are just a hop, skip and jump away from Huntsville. I'm having a tough time deciding if I should invest in the risk. I would really hate to fail and hurt my family financially. Any advice appreciated!

It looks like you're already selling cakes from home, so are you asking about opening a storefront? If that's your question I would wait until you had a solid business plan in place because comparing yourself to other bakers' websites isn't enough market research to make a decision!

If you're wondering about whether you should put more time and energy into the business that you have now, what extra costs are you anticipating?

That is exactly my question and what I'm doing. I don't know the right way to go about researching. As far as extra costs, I am anticipating 2k/mo in debt but that is just surface research. It isn't anything solid. I would like to consider opening a bakery as a career but really have no idea what to expect as far as monthly income and what the market is like.

I would guess that 2K a month in debt is going to be way on the low end, but I work from home so I don't know.

I would find the local S.C.O.R.E. group and make an appointment to talk to someone about the process. I would be willign to say right now that you're not ready to open a storefront based on not having nearly enough information on just the costs of it, but it sounds like you also need to talk to someone about the reality of what goes into running a shop. I never wanted to open a shop because I prefer to work less than 80 hours a week, and that's the easiest part of it!

I'll add that if you're going to open a shop your decorating skill is the least of your worries. You can always hire decorators. The other 90% of running the business is what's going to occupy your time. If you just want to decorate cakes you should go work for someone else first to see what goes into running a business. Doing that will give you a hard dose of reality and you can see if you really want to open your own place.

Thank you! That's exactly what I was looking for.