I am making plans to become legal, I'm almost there. I discovered that because my business would be considered a "catering business" I would have to deliver ALL cakes. If I had any pickups it would be considered a reatil store and that is not allowed. The grey area is that it really only matters if your neighbors complain of the traffic. I plan on inviting the neighbors over at some time just to let them know what I'm doing so they don't think I'm selling drugs with all the different cars in and out.

I don't really want to deliver all those cakes but at the same time I don't want to get caught and mess things up.

Do any of you have experience with this?

I wish I could help, but I don't have any neighbors.

Where I live, I can have people pick up, I just can't have more than one car on the road at a time. Wish I remembered who I talked to, but I am having a brain freeze.

meet them at the end of the street? lol. Dunno . . . I have to admit, if I had a neighbor doing this and it generated a lot of extra cars, I'd likely report it. Especially if you have an HOA. One of the reasons I bought where I did is because I liked having a quiet cul-de-sac.

But - could be your neighbors will never even notice.

Well if you take the cake to the car you just delivered it.........to the car???

How many cakes do you think you will do ? If you are not having a line up of cars every day I doubt anyone would really notice. But, if you are having 20 cakes a day go out the door then I would worry.

Joanne

What about having your customes wait by their cars while you take the cakes out to them? Seeing pink and whilte bakery boxes, what else would the neighbors think?

check to see if your city has a zoning classification and biz license for "low-volume" business based in home and businesses that provide professional services (such as Dr office, hair-stylist, manicurist, etc.) which can be done from a home.

my city classifies a home based decorator as a professional, low-volume biz so no problem with pick-ups at home.

for me, it does NOT require any change to my residential zoning.

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if I should need to go "bigger", then I can rezone to a classification that still lets me work from home but is considered a "small business" which gives two advantages: large % of floor space can be used by biz (residential limits it to about 25%) and greater customer traffic.