What should I check before buying a home-based bakery?

A home-based bakery often sells without a building. The kitchen is the seller’s, so what you buy is smaller and more portable: a name, an audience, recipes and a calendar of orders. That makes it important to be exact about what is included. Ask for a written list, and plan your own production space before you rely on any of it.

The brand and online accounts

Ask which names, social accounts, websites, photos and phone numbers are included, and how login details will be handed over. A bakery with a following is largely its accounts, so check that the seller controls them. Look at the history of posts, reviews and comments. Your lawyer can make sure the sale agreement names the accounts and any trademarks.

Orders, customers and recipes

Ask for the list of regular customers and open orders, and whether customers have agreed to be passed on. Recipes may be the main thing you are buying. Ask whether they are written, tested at scale and free of anyone else’s claim. Ask whether the seller will teach you to make the signature items before the handover, and for how long.

Custom cakes and deposits

Wedding and event cakes are booked weeks or months ahead, often with deposits. Ask for the booking calendar and what the seller has promised each customer. Decide who delivers on those orders and who holds the deposits. Our page on what happens to wedding bookings when a florist is sold shows the same issue.

Where production will move

The seller’s kitchen will probably not come with you. Think about where you will bake and what that costs, and ask the right authority about the rules for your kind of production, since that is a question for a lawyer or the local health office. Our page on buying a home-based business covers the wider checks.