Hey Besties! In our home bakery industry, bakers are always looking for unique and creative offerings to grow their businesses. And I’m all about helping you with the strategies, tools and guidance you need to succeed! I mean, that’s why I’m Your Baking Bestie, right? Which is why I’m so excited to be breaking down everything you need to start offering DIY cookie kits in your bakery! Or if you’re a hobby baker, these are fabulous for family and friends too! We’ll cover it all, from marketing, supplies, building your kits and even a free printable! Let’s jump in!
The Appeal Of DIY Cookie Kits
DIY cookie kits are loved by both bakers and customers for a variety of reasons. In some areas, they have been popular for years and in other areas, they may have not really been introduced yet. So if you’re a bakery biz bestie, it’s worth looking around to see if these are available in your area.
Why bakers Love Them
Many bakers love the simplicity and ease of being able to bake a large volume of cookies and be able to assemble and sell many diy cookie kits very efficiently. There’s no decorating involved, unless you want to include sample decorating inspiration in your kits, so they are very quick to make. In fact, I know cookiers who love to bake but not decorate, so these are actually their specialty!
Endless design options! It can be really fun to come up with new themes, colors, sprinkles, and other details to switch up your offerings. We love offering different flavor cookies, shapes, colors and themes!
And let’s not forget about profit margins! If you’re smart with sourcing your ingredients and supplies, profit margins can be really great on diy cookie kits. Remember, with custom decorated cookies, your biggest expense is your time. But with these, they take far less of YOUR time!
And lastly, I’m constantly reminding you how you need to be catering to ALL of your customers. If you only offer custom decorated cookies, you’re icing out a big segment of your clientele. Not everyone has a reason for or the budget for custom decorated cookies. DIY cookie kits are yet another great offering to appeal to a wider customer base.
Why Customers Love DIY Cookie Kits
Customers love these for a variety of reasons, but the number one reason I hear is that they are looking for affordable activities for kids that are not electronic! And I for one, applaud all parents who encourage creativity in their kids!
DIY cookie kits can be really popular for holiday activities, but we actually have a lot of customers who seek them out for birthday parties! Organizing a birthday party can get really expensive, really quick. These kits can be a much more affordable activity parents can offer for home parties.
Customers love being able to get freshly baked, delicious cookies with everything they need to entertain kids. So whether it’s a family activity, holiday, birthday party or another kind of celebration, they work perfectly.
How to Market DIY Cookie Kits
I’m kind of a broken record with this, but people buy with their eyes. Make a sample DIY cookie kit and share it on your socials or website! Let your customers know this is an option you have available for birthday parties and other celebrations. Introduce and share new theme sets on a regular basis! And some cookiers even offer their customers to custom create their own themes. Customers love to be able to get custom creations, so if their kid loves cars, build a car theme! Many cookiers create a menu of themes always available and then offer holiday options as the seasons arise.
Especially around holidays, remind your customers what a fun activity these can be for kids and adults during their holiday gatherings!
Cookie Kit Pricing
As always, pricing varies greatly depending on each cookier’s market, clientele and expenses. A one-dozen cookie kit is by far the most popular and I would say typically sell for $25-$40 depending on the factors already mentioned, along with cookie sizes, sprinkle and icing options.
Remember, the easiest way to increase your profit margins is by decreasing YOUR expenses. Take the time to source out the best prices for your kit supplies and ingredients. I’ll share what we use for all of our supplies in each section below, but you can also check out my Amazon page where I’ve created a “DIY Cookie Kit Supplies” category. This includes everything we use all in one place!
DIY Cookie Kit Supplies
This is the fun part! In today’s example, we’ve built this dinosaur cookie kit, and we’ll break it all down, but you can apply this to any theme! First, let’s cover the consumables in your kit.
Cutout Cookies!
We’ve created a one-dozen cookie kit here, using four different cookie cutters (three of each cookie). THIS is the cookie cutter set we used for this kit. And if you need a fabulous no-chill, no-spread cutout cookie recipe, you’ll find our collection HERE!
Royal Icing
Some cookiers use buttercream for their cookie kits, but we still love royal icing for our cookie kits. We use the same recipe we use for all of our own cookie decorating, which you can find HERE!
General rule of thumb is that you should provide 1 ounce of royal icing per cookie in your kit. So, we will provide 12 ounces of icing in this one-dozen kit. In today’s example, we’ve chosen to include 4 colors, so we easily weighed and bagged 3 ounces of each color. Our kitchen scale is our bestie when making these kits! THIS is the one we love!
In consideration of icing consistency, we bag our icing for our kits at a thicker flood consistency, for a couple reasons. First, royal icing can thin slightly after sitting for periods of time, so we’re compensating for this. Secondly, slightly thicker icing is easier for decorators to manage and work with compared to overly thin icing. So we make about a 20-second consistency for our cookie kits.
Sprinkles
We like to provide 3-4 fun sprinkle options in each of our kits and obviously there are endless sprinkle options you can use! But I do want to encourage you to shop smart! Sprinkles can get expensive really quickly and eat into those profit margins. We buy certain mixes in bulk that we use year-round, like THIS one for example. You can get them even cheaper if you’re willing to buy several pounds at a time. We don’t go crazy with huge quantities, but you can still save A LOT by buying in bulk. For our cookie kits, we commonly provide a couple sprinkle mixes we get in bulk and then 1-2 sprinkle options that are a little fancier or themed.
Cookie Kit Packaging
Cookie Boxes
Let’s start putting this all together into your cute kit! We’ll start with the boxes we LOVE and use for all of our diy cookie kits! THESE are the nicest, sturdiest boxes we’ve found are a good price. Best of all, they automatically pop open, so no box building here.
Then we add some paper shred for cookie protection and cuteness!
Cookie Bags
We bag our cookies by shape, so in this case, we had 4 bags with 3 cookies in each. THESE 5×7 bags are our absolute favorite and all we use. We heat seal the bag closed and trim the excess with pinking shears. They look like this once bagged!
Piping Bags
We use our favorite piping bags in our diy cookie kits, and you can find those HERE! We’ve never had one burst, and, in our experience, they work beautifully for those using a bag for the first time.
We put a large glass on our kitchen scale and pour the desired amount right into the bag (in this case, 3 oz per bag). Then we simply tie off the bag and cut off excess.
Sprinkles & Scribes
To package our sprinkles, we use THESE cute little cups! Super quick, easy and look great in our kits!
We also include fancy toothpicks as scribes and make a little heat seal bag for those using our regular bags. This way, they stay clean and don’t get lost in the shred. Sometimes we use cute holiday ones, but we always keep THESE in stock for year-round use. Again, these are details that can get expensive if you buy custom ones for every set! Keep your profit margins high buy sourcing your supplies smart, Besties!
Let’s Build Our Cookie Kit!
Time to put it all together! This is how our cookie kit looks once built! Cute, right?! Who wouldn’t be delighted to receive this?!
Dino Cookie Kit Instructions
Of course, you want to include instructions for the recipient to have success in their cookie decorating! And of course, we want them to be cute! So I’ve created this free dino cookie kit instruction printable for you to use! This will tell your customer everything they need to know to enjoy the cookie kit you’ve created for them!
Some cookiers simply place this card inside the box, as shown below. Or, we like to add some ribbon or twine to our kit, use a hole punch in the card to add it to the outside of the box. Both examples are shown here; you’ve got options!
You can download your free cookie card instructions HERE or be clicking on the example photo below. Enjoy!
What are You waiting for, Bestie?!
I hope this post all about DIY cookie kits has inspired you to create your own! Whether they are for friends, family or customers, you’ve got everything you need to execute! And if you are a bakery biz bestie, I’m confident your customers are going to love this new offering!
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