Home Baking in the pandemic

The COVID 19 pandemic has brought in a huge change in the normal lives of people and has affected the financial status to a great extent. The businesses have faced huge losses and most of the people ended up losing their jobs. Since the lockdown continued for months, people became financially weak and took up different jobs, and started businesses on their own with less investment. Businesses related to food were something that became very common. Home Baking in specific was taken up by a lot of people as a source of income.

Being a person who has always been fond of food and cooking, I have always had the enthusiasm towards learning new and fancy recipes. Since my mother was professionally trained as a baker, I have also learned a variety of bakery items. A friend of mine always had a passion for having her own bakery in the long run. In the lockdown, her family suffered a financial crisis and that pushed her to have her own bakery. However, she did not have professional training and nor did she have the amount to invest in a bakery shop. She learned a number of items from me under my mother’s guidance and decided to start a bakery business at home with minimal expenses and investment.

Figure 1: She started taking orders for cakes and cookies.

She invested a total of 3000 rupees and bought all the ingredients required for all the dishes on her menu. We designed the menu and the logo ourselves and I named it ‘Luscious’. She included pizzas, sandwiches, pasta, cakes, brownies, pastries, etc. in her menu. Luckily, on day 1, she got 11 orders and it only kept increasing each day. People also liked what she was doing and the feedback was really good. She decided to stick to her locality only at first since it was a bit out of the city but even then she was getting sufficient orders of almost all the items since everything was very cheap and yet the quality and quantity were good. Now, she has increased the number of items on her menu and has homemade chocolates that she is supplying to a number of shops and all kinds of party cakes also. She also took another professional course for party cakes and is now doing really well in her business.

Figure 2: She started supplying homemade chocolates to shops.

She is not the only one who has started the business at home during the lockdown. I have come across a lot of people who have made home baking a source of income. The idea of a home baker is a great idea according to me as they are doing something at home and that will definitely give the guaranty of hygiene to some extent and also of good quality food. Apart from that, it is also a very good opportunity for people who have been idle, know the art of baking, and are looking for an opportunity to earn. The lockdown has got into us a lot of ideas that we probably did not think of before we faced the pandemic situation. It was the situation that actually made us think of the numerous options that we actually had to earn.

Food has definitely been a very common business in the pandemic. Not just baking but a lot of other things have been done by people for the purpose of starting up a small business and earning some money. People have also cooked food at home and supplied to PGs and hostels that did not have cooks, people started cooking at home and taking orders, and a lot more.