I have a 4-year old licensed in home bakery and I'm interested in expanding it into a bakery/cake supply store in Ohio. Does anyone have any idea how I can began to do this? Thank you in advance for all your help.

I don't have any advice about opening a supply shop, but what part of Ohio are you in -- I might be a future customer

I'm not 100% positive on all of the legalities of it, but I think once you branch out into having a store front and selling other things you are no longer considered an in home bakery so I would think you would need licensing, different insurance, and probably need to be in an area that is zoned commercial. Those are just a few of the things I can think of off the top of my head that you would need to look into.

Just a few thoughts, if you are going to have supply store in your home, check with the zoning commission as to what your area is zoned, like cakemaker stated, you will need to be in a commercial zoned area. You will need a vendors license because of selling taxable items. There are many variables as to what county, city, township...whatever and their particular regulations. When you branch out from the cottage law its a whole new ballgame. Best of luck, and if you are near me, count me as a potential customer.

If you are planning on doing it at home, there could be a lot of variables. In my town all property within 1 block of main street is considered commercial zone, even if it's in a residential neighborhood, so you might want to check out the zoning charts. Also, we have a computer business that is licensed at our house (where dh does the actual tech work, though we have a 'store front' address inside another business for pick ups and drop offs, etc), and it was easy to get a zoning variance because we never have more than 3 customers per hour coming to our house. So a lot depends on what your local laws/ordinances are and how much traffic you expect to get. Also, if you are going to do mail order, that could be a decent percentage of your business without adding traffic on your street.

Check your ordinances and see what you can work out. Depending on how you licensed your first business, you may or may not need to license the second business separately. Our license for our computer business is broad enough I can sell almost anything under it, but I'll probably have to do some additional paperwork if I decide to start selling my cakes.