Kitty (13) tells us about the launch of Kit ‘n’ Kaboodle Café with her friend Emily (13) at the Guildford Children’s Business Fair
How did you get started with your business?
I actually started with the name. I used to draw loads of pictures of my café when I was younger. I always called it Kit ‘n’ Kaboodle Cafe. So, it was obvious really.
At the fair, we sold decorated cupcakes and “Cake In A Mug” – a mug with the dry ingredients to make a microwave brownie.
What research did you do for your business?
I made loads of test batches of cupcakes, but getting them the same took too much time.
The problem with baking is that you have to make everything the day before, otherwise they’ll go stale. Also if we didn’t sell all the cupcakes on the day, we’d have to throw them away. We were quite jealous of people who’d made things that wouldn’t go off.
We ended up finding cupcake bases at a supermarket that cost 8.3p each. This was actually cheaper that we could make it and they all looked the same. So we ended up decorating 120 cupcakes the night before. It was pretty fun, but hard work.
What was your business plan?
We worked out that cost per cupcake was 25.3p. If we sold each cupcake for £1, we’d make 74.7p profit per cupcake.
We did special deals for customers, and eventually made £84.50 in total. We didn’t sell many Cake In A Mug, and had around 35 cupcakes left which we had to give way – which was really annoying.
Did you enjoy the fair?
It was amazing. I loved talking to all the people about our business. And I really loved it when they paid money for our cupcakes.
What advice would you give potential participants?
If you’re choosing baking as a business, be careful. You’ll have to be working really hard in the two days before the fair. Also, if you don’t sell it all on the day, you may have to throw it all away.
Are you going to continue to develop your business?
For the next fair, I probably wouldn’t do baking again. If I do Kit ‘n’ Kaboodle Café again, I’ll probably do drinks and maybe sandwiches. I think all the participants were quite hungry, so I could sell to them.
