AI bake out of my home and have for the past 7 years. (Legal where I live). I have been very successful and I am booked up months in advance. I chose to go into this field after being a stay at home mom and my children went into school. It was a dream of mine to be this successful and I thank God for that everyday.

But it is time for a change. I want my life back. I don't want all this responsibility. I want free time to do what I want. I have discussed this with my husband and he is supportive of my decision. I will no longer take orders after this summer. Excited to see what opportunity is out there for me outside of the cake world.

For those of you who stopped taking orders or closed your shop, was it a good decision? How did you go about telling your customers? I think I am going to look at it as a hiatus for 4-5 months and reevaluate and see if that is truly what I want to do. I am so excited to finally have my weekends free!!!!

I told people I was taking a break for awhile  due to my daughter's activity schedule which left me no time for cakes.  I love having my life back and only do cakes when I want to do them and a few obligatory one's here and there. I really just prefer to make cakes for friends as gifts when I want to do it.  

I cut way down on my orders as well.  I want a clean kitchen for a while.  Just tell people you are taking a hiatus at the end of the summer to pursue other interests.

I don't have a business, but was doing a lot as gifts for family and friends, but started studying, and am doing a lot less. I just facebooked that I was busy studying now, and wouldn't be doing cakes except for nieces and nephew's birthdays, and it was fine. I know your situation is different.

But I'm definitely enjoying a cleaner kitchen and less deadlines.

AInstead of quitting I put my prices way up, now if I get an order it's more worth the struggle between working FT and doing cakes PT... for my fav customers I still do them cakes at the old prices but that's only a half dozen a year. now I do about 1 cake every other week and I love it! Although I do spend a lot of evenings practicing flowers and figures lol

Best of luck and enjoy getting your life back :-)

A

We haven't completely stopped making cakes (yet), but we did close our shop and just do them on the side now. We're still trying to figure out how much we want to do, or if we just want to stop doing cakes completely, at least for a while. Of course we would finish the ones we already have on the books. For us, scaling back was absolutely a good decision, I am SO much less stressed! And we have a life again! The business (and especially the shop) took pretty much ALL of the joy out of it for us, which is why we are not even sure we want to do it at all.

As far as telling your customers, your FB page is a great way to just make an announcement saying that you are taking a break for a while, or however you would like to word it. You will probably still have to field calls for a while, or (assuming you have a separate business phone) you could say you are on a break on your outgoing message and not even have to answer the phone. Maybe put a message on the home page of your website as well.

It sounds like you are ready for a break, I say go for it! Enjoy having weekends again! :-D

I put my cake business on hold since my DH and I bought a small restaurant.  We'd been out of the business for a while and were thrilled to have the opportunity to get back into it.  I've done a few cakes on the side and one old friend who resurfaced has been ordering a half sheet about every other week. 

I've found that I have to compete with 3 cooks for oven time and traipsing through the kitchen with hot cakes needing to cool and tools needing to be washed just isn't viable.  And since we're there every morning at 4, there's just no energy left after we close for the day.

I decided that cakes would have to wait until we can become fully staffed which is a problem for all businesses in this area.  I still come here to look at the beautiful creations everyone else is producing and try to keep up with some of the new stuff.  I miss having extra time to sit and piddle with flowers and such, but the few cakes I have done were so frustrating when they didn't turn out perfect immediately.  I can certainly live without that.  All in all, I don't regret it, but I'm looking forward to the day . . .

AAfter running the cake shop with my business partner for 4 years, I left this past September 1st. I backed out of the business taking a full set of tools and moved back to the studio kitchen in my home. I haven't been this happy in a long time.

I dont miss the stress, working weekends, standing for hours, driving around on personal time picking up supplies or working for months on end without a paycheque because the shop isnt doing well.

Now I do cakes only when I want. I have a small clientele I work for and also teach a couple cake classes a week. I'm loving doing cakes again. I have time to explore and try new techniques, recipes and ideas. What a relief.