Want to make holiday gift baskets

[rootzdawta]

I bake vegan desserts (cakes, cookies, pastries) and I just got a great suggestion to make a little money on the side by doing holiday gift baskets/packages. I just have no idea where to start. I do know I'd like it to be on a small scale. I can deliver to anywhere in my county (but the price of the basket would reflect that). I don't know if I should do baskets or some kind of other wrapping. Not really sure about how to price things. Not really sure if there's an interest--although I think I could really promote the dairy-free, egg-free, cholesterol-free angle with good results. Can you point me in the right direction?

Here's a list of the things I bake:
Chocolate Cake
Vanilla (traditional yellow) Cake
Carrot Cake
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
Brownies
Coffee Cake
“Cheese” cake
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Oatmeal Raisin or Cranberry Cookies
Peanut Butter Cookies
Ginger Cookies
Banana Walnut Bread
Corn Bread
Gingerbread
Cinnamon Rolls
Danish
Lemon Squares
Chocolate Balls
Toffee Nut Bars
Sweet Potato Pie
Apple Pie
Crème pie
Pumpkin pie

I'm leaning towards only doing the basket for cookies (especially the ginger cookies), pastries and breads (especially the gingerbread and banana nut bread) as those would be the easiest to package and would probably look the nicest. Any ideas are appreciated!

[E.V. Lowi]

I don't know anything about selling food, but I have see FDA and USDA approved food packaging in the Uline catalog-

http://www.uline.com/Product/AdvSear...od%20packaging

http://www.uline.com/BL_5501/Bakery-Bags

Good luck with it! :

[janasmama]

I would check out the price of other food baskets and then figure out what your cost is and the time you will have to put into it. See if there is profit for you and whether your price will be somewhat competitive. I think you should look for a wholesale basket option b/c nice baskets can usually be expensive and sometimes is the heftiest part of the price of the food basket.

ETA: When I do things I give myself and hourly wage. If it takes me 2 hours to make enough pastries for 5 baskets then I will take my hourly wage of $X and split that up between the 5 baskets for that one item...does that make since. So if my wage is $10 an hour, then it would cost $4 to have those pastries in one basket plus the cost of the products to make them.