How to start a home bakery business online — cakes, cookies and brownies from your own kitchen

TL;DR

• • Paperwork: FSSAI registration, plus your society’s rules and any local trade licence. Confirm with the authority or a CA.
• • Menu: two or three flavours in two sizes, one cookie box, one brownie box, and custom cakes on request.
• • Price: ingredients + box + gas + your hours + fees, then a margin.
• • Delivery: a small radius, a flat charge, a pickup option.
• • Orders: a clear cut-off (for example “order by 6 pm for tomorrow”), and pause ordering when you’re full.
• • Payment: online or UPI before baking for custom cakes; COD only for regulars and ready items.

1. Paperwork: FSSAI and local rules

This is general information, not legal advice. Food rules are enforced locally and change, so confirm your own case.

• FSSAI registration. Anyone who makes and sells food, including home bakers, is generally expected to be registered with the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India. Small businesses usually start with a basic registration; larger ones need a state or central licence. You apply on FoSCoS, FSSAI’s official online portal, which tells you which one fits your size. Once you have a number, show it on your labels and on your store’s About page.
• Local rules. Some cities ask for a trade licence from the municipal office, and some housing societies have rules about running a business from a flat. Check both before you print your menu.
• GST. Whether you need to register depends on your yearly sales. See do you need GST to sell online in India and confirm with a CA.
• Label what’s inside. Mark every product eggless or with egg, and list allergens such as nuts, gluten and dairy. Buyers ordering for children or guests will ask, so answer on the product page.

2. A small menu, priced properly

A short menu is easier to bake well, easier to photograph, and easier for a buyer to choose from. A good start: two or three cake flavours in 0.5 kg and 1 kg, one cookie box, one brownie box, and a “custom cake” listing for everything else. Add seasonal items later (plum cake in December, dessert boxes for Diwali) as limited drops.

Price from your costs, including your hours. Here is a worked example for a 1 kg chocolate cake. The numbers are only an example; use your own ingredient prices and time.

At ₹1,200, about ₹246 is left for wasted bakes, samples and growth, with delivery charged separately. If that feels thin, it is: raise the price or simplify the decoration. Don’t cut your hourly rate. The free product pricing calculator and how to price your products help with the rest.

3. Delivery: a radius you can actually reach

A cream cake is at its best for a short time, so your delivery area is decided by the drive, not by the map. Start with your own neighbourhood. Deliver yourself, ask a family member, or book a local bike parcel service. In summer, use an insulated bag or a car with AC.

• One flat delivery charge, with free delivery above an order value you choose. On SitesPlaced this also turns on the free-shipping bar (“Add ₹300 more for free delivery”).
• Pickup: a checkbox at checkout, for example “I’ll pick up from the kitchen”, removes the delivery charge. It works on trust, so check the address before you confirm.
• Midnight delivery: the express delivery option can be relabelled, for example “Midnight delivery (11 pm to 12 am)”, with its own flat charge.
• A minimum order for delivery (for example ₹500), with a message buyers see until their cart reaches it.

The store can’t block orders by pincode, so say your delivery area plainly in the announcement bar and at checkout, and call a buyer who is outside it. If you want to send cookies or other dry bakes to other cities, that is a different business with different packing and labels; see how to sell homemade food online in India.

4. Preorders and cut-off times

A preorder is an order placed before you bake. A cut-off is the last time you accept orders for a given day. Pick rules you can keep on your busiest week, for example: “Order by 6 pm for next-day delivery. Custom and photo cakes need 48 hours.” Put them in the announcement bar and in each product description.

• Ask for the date and time at checkout. There is no calendar picker, so turn on the order notes box and relabel it “Delivery date and time”.
• Cap each day with stock. If you can make ten brownie boxes a day, set stock to 10 each morning. The product shows sold out after the tenth order.
• Pause when you’re full. Before Diwali or Christmas, “Pause ordering” keeps your menu visible but stops new orders, with your own message such as “Fully booked till the 5th. Orders open again on the 6th.”

5. Advance payment or cash on delivery?

Cash on delivery (COD) means the buyer pays when the order arrives. For a cake baked for one person, with their name piped on top, a cancellation means a cake you can’t sell to anyone else. The safe rule: payment before you bake for anything made to order.

• Online payment: connect your own Razorpay, PhonePe or Cashfree account for UPI, cards and net banking. Money settles to your bank; SitesPlaced takes 0%.
• Pay the store directly: buyers place the order, then pay your UPI ID. You confirm once the money arrives.
• COD: switch it off, or keep it for ready items and add a small COD charge.
• Part advance: the store takes the full amount in one payment. If you want 50% upfront for a large wedding cake, take that order on WhatsApp and send a UPI QR code.

6. Custom cakes over WhatsApp, without the chaos

Custom cakes start on WhatsApp, and that’s fine. What goes wrong is details lost in a long chat. Use the same checklist every time and save it as a quick reply in WhatsApp Business: date and time, flavour, weight, eggless or not, theme or reference photo, message on the cake, delivery or pickup, address. Send the price in writing, take the advance, and repeat the details back before you bake.

On the Food Store template, a product with no fixed price shows “Price on request” with a button that opens WhatsApp with the product already named. That makes “Custom theme cake” a real listing with photos of past work, instead of a line in your bio. Standard cakes can be ordered directly, with these free settings doing the questioning for you:

7. Photos, packing and your first orders

Photograph each cake in daylight near a window: one from the front, one from above, and one cut slice showing the layers. Add a knife or a hand in one shot so the size is clear. Use a sturdy box with a base board, and a sticker with the flavour, eggless or with egg, and “best eaten within” the time you have tested.

• Start with people who can taste you: send a small tasting box to neighbours, colleagues and your society group (following its rules on promotion).
• Post reels of the bake: frosting, the first cut, the box being tied. Put the price in the caption and the menu link in your bio.
• Share one menu link on WhatsApp status and in a broadcast list every week, with that week’s special.
• Plan for festivals and birthdays: announce preorders early and pause when you’re full.

More on this in how to get your first 10 orders on a new online store and WhatsApp checkout for Instagram stores.

8. Set up your free bakery store

1. Pick the Food Store template. The Food Store uses big bold type and colourful cards, shows sizes like 0.5 kg or 1 kg right on the product card, and has “Price on request” for custom cakes. Pick carefully: changing template later means making a new store.
2. Add your menu with photos, sizes as options (each with its own price), and allergens and eggless status in the description.
3. Turn on the cake message and photo upload on the products that need them, and add paid extras like candles or a topper.
4. Set checkout: online payment and/or pay-the-store-directly by UPI; COD only if you want it; order notes relabelled for the delivery date.
5. Set delivery: flat charge, free above an amount, the pickup checkbox, and a minimum order if you need one.
6. Publish on your free address, yourbakery.sitesplaced.site, and put it in your bio.

If you prefer to confirm every order in a chat, the setting “WhatsApp is the only way to order” keeps the cart and sends each order to your WhatsApp. For a wider look at food layouts, see the best food brand website templates.

9. When to upgrade

The free plan has no limit on products or orders, so stay on it while you find your regulars. When you want a proper name, Starter (₹199/month, or ₹1,990/year) gives you your own domain such as yourbakery.com, removes the SitesPlaced badge, adds store analytics, and makes your store’s pages answer about 4× faster than on the free plan: in our measurements on live paid stores on 28 September 2026, a page answered in about 75 ms instead of about 330 ms. “Answer” is how quickly the page starts arriving on a phone, before the photos load, not the full page load, and your menu changes still show at once. Growth (₹499/month) adds product reviews and sales boosters. The code FREE7 gives 7 days free on either when you set up autopay; cancel before the first charge and you pay nothing.

Frequently asked questions