I very recently got my kitchen license and had just planned to slowly build a wedding cake business(I'm not in a rush, my kids are small) and hope that once the kids are in school I'll be busy enough to transition from my current career into baking. My husband brings my cakes into work whenever I try out new recipes(trying to not make us fatter). One of the guys my husband works with had several restaurants and is semi retired now. Not trying to toot my own horn, but he told my husband that my cakes are the best cakes he's ever tasted and that I should sell them to the local restaurants. He said he had a woman who sold him cakes and he served them by the slice at his restaurant, he said she did it out of her home and he "swears she made more money than him" selling to three different restaurants beside him. Anyways, I was wondering if anyone has done this in their area and if so how did you go about marketing yourself, do you/did you find it profitable? I'm thinking 10" sized triple layer cakes of various flavors could get 12 decent sized restaurant slices out of them. Just not sure how to market, I'm not sure if restaurants would appreciate me just showing up with samples and price lists or if I should send a professional package with pricing and to call if interested? Just wondering what everyone's thoughts are or if anyone does this currently out of their licensed kitchen. Thank you in advance!

I think if thats something your interested in, then go for it. My brother-in-law knows some restraunt owners & actually was able to have that done for me, but I also have small kids, and I'm really not interested in something so demanding. I prefer the customized, personal, one-on-one, special occasion cakes. So you may want to ask yourself is that something you really want & can really commit to, cause it is a big commitment. If yes, then I think you should get a package together, call restaurant managers/owners to introduce yourself, ask to set up a quick meeting, give them your package with samples. I think the size your talking about is a pretty good size too. Good luck.

LaBellaFlor-

Thanks for the encouragement!

I think you should go for it, too. Just make sure to check that you don't need additional licensing. Some areas require a food manufacturers license to sell to other places for them to resell.

Just thinking.... 10-inch triple layer cake that yields 12 slices. Those slices are going to be grotesque! I would say sixteen slices.

mensch-

Do you think?...hmm...I guess I'll have to re-eval the slices...

If your are selling to restaurants, its not up to you to evaluate the size of slices. I would imagine the restaurant has a portion marker for cakes and pies.
You would need to think about pricing in a different way when being sold for re-sale. I doubt if you would be able to earn as much money selling this way, after all the restaurant is not going to pay you $3 or $4 a slice when they sell it for that much.
Just my thoughts, best of luck with your venture.

That will be a lot of cake making! Huge commitment, I agree. If you are up for that, I think it is a great idea. There are some smaller, non-chain type restaurants around me that do this. Maybe you could come up with some beautiful packaging for samples, find out when the person in charge of making decisions like that will be there and drop off a sample package with all of your contact info. Good luck! Let us know how this goes.

I was pursuing this avenue for a while and supplying cakes for a local deli. The delivery is what got to me. And it wasn't as lucrative as you might assume. And a PP is correct. Sometimes you have to move from a catering license to a manufacturing license. Check everything out in detail.

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