Want to Know How to Start a Candy Business and Be the Best Part of Someone’s Day?
So you’ve decided to open a candy shop. Maybe you’ve always wanted to run your own business selling delectable desserts. Or maybe it’s a recent decision to become your own boss, and the sweets industry is where your research has led you. Now, you need to know how to start a candy business, either from home or in a retail space.
You’ve come to the right place. We’ve got everything you need to know about how to start your own candy business.
How to Start a Candy Business Step By Step
Determine Your Shop Type – Online or Brick-and-Mortar
This may seem like it should come later, but answering this question will inform you how to start a candy business—either at home or for retail.
Some municipalities outline the type of kitchen permitted to produce consumables for public consumption. In some places, home kitchens are permitted to produce commercially available products. Other locations may require home-based shops to use a wholly separate kitchen from the one where the homeowners make their personal meals.
Knowing which way your town leans will let you know if you’re outfitting your own kitchen or searching for retail space.
Determine Your Candy Type
You may already have a confection you’re passionate about, but if you haven’t decided on your candy, this is a big step in how to start a candy business. Take into account your local market, potential competition, and what candies will sell in your area.
Also, are you home or retail? Will your home kitchen accommodate your candy?
If you can identify a niche, that’s ideal. Offering a candy that’s more unique can help you shine in your local market. If you’re exclusively online, a standout product is a virtual requirement.
Name Your Sweet Shop
Your shop’s name needs to stick in people’s minds, which is why a lot of candy shop names play on words with sweet, sugary themes. Your candy shop name will be a big part of your business.
Once christened, it’s wise to register your new business. Your local Chamber of Commerce will have all the information necessary to take that step, both locally and with your state.
Set Up Shop
Your how-to-start-a-candy-business plan has reached a fork in the road: home-based or retail?
For home-based confectioners, you’ll begin sourcing supplies—ingredients, molds, decorator tools, packaging, and shipping items.
You will need to give your kitchen a critical once-over for any appliances necessary to really launch your new candy venture. Additionally, you’ll need office space for duties such as ordering and all data tracking to keep your business running smoothly. A comfortable desk that will support a computer, phone, and general office supplies will go a long way.
This is not all you need to start a candy business from home, but you’re well on your way to opening your new candy shop at this stage.
Retail-based shopkeepers will be searching for brick-and-mortar space where your shop will open for business. Once you’ve located the building that will suit your commercial kitchen equipment, sales cases or shelves, register, any customer seating you may offer, and your administrative office space can you begin sourcing supplies and building vendor relationships.
Build a Website
In a home-based candy shop, this step is the most important for how to start a candy business. This is your portal through which customers will purchase your candy. For brick-and-mortar candy shops, an online presence can be an excellent revenue stream as well.
Your website’s foundation will be a solid e-commerce platform, and there are website developers who specialize in building these sites. These experts help you pick the platform that best serves your candy shop and gives your customers a pleasing shopping experience.
Keep in mind your branding is part of the design process, so this step is often done in conjunction with the graphic design of the logo and branding.
Showcase Your Candy to Customers
People need to know about your shop, and that means spreading the word. This is one of the most important steps in how to start a candy business.
Create samples that show off the best of what you can do. Hire a talented food photographer to take photos of your work in its best light. Then, wrap your samples and put your work out there.
Share them with local businesses to introduce your new business. Offer free samples where you can to customers shopping near your retail location.
If you’re home-based and online, try cross-promoting with local businesses in parallel industries like donut or coffee shops or independent bakeries, who may be agreeable to adding a small free sample of yours to their orders.
Marketing Materials and Strategies
Those fancy photos of your samples are perfect not only for your website, but also for business cards and brochures. Graphic designers can design top-notch promotional materials for you.
Once your branding is in place, expand the networking that began with your samples. Cross-promotion with local businesses—wedding and event planners, bakeries, coffee shops, bridal shops, florists, and other community businesses—may help you get your brand out there. Make sure their clientele is a match to your target demographic.
There you have it—how to start a candy business from scratch, both from a home or retail perspective.
How to Start a Candy Business the Tifa Chocolate & Gelato Way
It’s rewarding, becoming your own boss and opening a candy shop. It’s also quite an undertaking to do on your own. There are many details, questions, and checklists, as well as the day-to-day running of the business.
What if you could still be your own boss, but you didn’t have to do it alone? You can! By investing in a candy shop franchise, such as Tifa Chocolate & Gelato.
We’ve been through how to start a candy business, and we’ve come out the other side with a business that has years of positive performance. We are the best part of someone’s day, and that includes our franchisees.
For an initial investment estimate between $318,200 and $509,400—which includes the franchise fee of $47,500—our franchise owners become part of the Tifa Chocolate & Gelato family.
Not only does that include access to our exclusive delectable dessert recipes, it also encompasses our tried-and-tested candy shop franchise model. We’ve developed our franchise model with industry experts, so the opening process of a Tifa Chocolate & Gelato franchise is as smooth as the silkiest chocolate.
This includes:
- Expert advice on site selection for the ideal franchise location
- Extensive in-house training to learn all of our exclusive recipes directly from Le Cordon Bleu trained Head Chef Candace Roño, who is the magic behind each Tifa Chocolate & Gelato confection
- Weekly Track-to Open calls that guide franchisees through the opening phase so the process is smooth as the sweetest dessert
- On-site training prepares franchisees and their staff for the big opening day and puts members of our leadership team in place for any needed support during the grand opening
- Weekly Track-to-Profit calls designed to support franchisees with insights and strategies as they reach for profitable measures and ROI
- National supplier agreement to keep with Tifa Chocolate & Gelato flavors and branding
- Marketing strategies that assist franchisees with local, regional, and national advertising campaigns as the brand grows
Looking for how to start a candy business? The best way we know how is to join the Tifa Chocolate & Gelato franchise and become a part of our franchise family. If this sounds like a sweet deal to you, we’d love to hear from you!