Does a Baker Need a Website? The Honest Answer
A home baker doing steady trade from Instagram orders and a full book of birthday cakes might not feel short of anything a website would fix. So does a baker need a website, or is that money spent on a problem word of mouth already solved? The honest answer turns on something more specific to this trade than most: what has to be written down the moment a wrapped cake reaches someone who isn't already family or a friend of a friend.
Does a baker need a website?
For a full diary built on recommendations, not urgently, same as most trades on this list. What's different for a baker is that selling food to a stranger carries requirements a phone number or a DM thread was never built to satisfy. Those apply from the first sale outside your own circle, however small the operation still is.
What does Natasha's Law actually require?
Natasha's Law is the working name for the rule on prepacked for direct sale food, PPDS for short: food that's packaged where it's sold, ready to hand over before the customer has ordered or chosen it, which describes a boxed or wrapped cake made to order as much as it does a sandwich on a shop counter. The Food Standards Agency's own guidance for bakers says PPDS food must carry a label showing the name of the food and a full ingredients list, with any of the fourteen allergens emphasised every time they appear, in bold, capitals, underlined or a contrasting colour. A label printed once for "Victoria sponge" and reused for every order stops being accurate the moment someone asks for a different filling.
Do you need to register as a food business first?
Yes, and it comes before the labelling question, not after it. gov.uk's own guidance says that anyone who sells, cooks, stores, handles, prepares or distributes food needs to register with their local authority, that registration applies "regardless of where they operate from", home and online sellers included, and that you're required to register at least 28 days before you start trading. It's free, and the guidance is explicit that it can't be refused, so there's no approval to wait on, only the 28 days themselves.
What can a website say that a DM thread can't?
A product page can list what's actually in each bake, the allergens, the collection or delivery options and the notice you need, and show the same version of that to every buyer before they hand over any money. A DM thread depends on you remembering to say it every time, and on the buyer scrolling back up to find it again later. That gap matters more here than in most trades, because UK consumer law already treats an order taken by message as a proper distance sale, with the same expectations attached as a website's order form, minus anywhere to point a customer back to if a message gets lost.
A free Facebook or Instagram page genuinely does reach the people who already follow you, and that's most of a full diary. What it doesn't give a stranger is a page they can send someone else to, one that still says the same thing about allergens and turnaround next week as it does today.
Does it help you get found on Google?
It helps with the free listing most home bakers haven't set up yet. Working from a kitchen rather than a shop doesn't rule that out: Google's own guidance says a business that doesn't serve customers at its own address can choose not to show it and list a service area instead, which keeps your kitchen off a public map while a Google Business Profile still surfaces you for "cake maker near" whichever town you cover. That listing has nowhere to hold the ingredients and allergen detail above, though, only a website does.
When can it genuinely wait?
If your book is full from people who already know your work, and you've no interest in taking orders from anyone outside that circle, a website sits low on the list. It tends to stop being reasonable the moment a stranger asks what's in a cake before they'll pay for one and the honest answer lives only in a chat thread you'd have to go digging for.
We're a web studio, so take that as our own working shown rather than a neutral verdict, as part of the same guide to a first small business website this one belongs to. We render a finished site from a short form before anything is owed, send a private preview link, and only take payment if you keep it. Setup is from £495 and the care plan, covering hosting, security, backups and edits, is from £69 a month. If you'd rather see what that looks like first, the sites we've rendered are there to look through, and the form is where a preview starts.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a food hygiene certificate to sell cakes from home?
Not as a specific legal requirement for selling homemade cakes, but registering as a food business with your council (see above) is. Councils and food-safety trainers consistently point new sellers toward a recognised Level 2 food hygiene course as the practical next step, and it's a cheap way to show a stranger you take handling and allergens seriously.
What if I only bake for family, friends or a one-off school fair?
Then none of this is triggered. Registration and Natasha's Law both turn on selling as a business, not on baking itself, and gov.uk's own guidance treats an irregular, non-commercial bake as outside that definition. The line moves the moment it becomes a regular way of selling to people who aren't already in your circle.
Does the ingredients list have to be exact for every single order?
PPDS labelling attaches to the item at the point it's packaged for that customer, so what has to be right is the actual ingredients in that cake, not a generic list printed once and reused across every flavour you make. A custom order with a swapped filling needs its own label.
Can Instagram or a Facebook page do the job instead of a website?
For the orders that already find you through people who know your work, largely yes. What a feed can't do reliably is put the same allergen and ingredient information in front of every buyer before they pay, which is exactly what the law asks for and exactly what a DM thread tends to lose.