5k Cinnamon Rolls: holiday tradition turned profitable business

How our families favorite holiday tradition turned profitable business by selling cinnamon rolls out of our house during the holidays! It’s possible to turn your hobby into something that can help out financially during this time of year when expenses tend to run high. I will share with you my step by step process for how I did it in hopes that you will feel confident to do it, too!

How it happened

It’s no surprise this time of year that expenses rise quite a bit. Even if you go modest with gifts around the holidays, there are so many other things that can add up quickly. I found myself in this same situation as a SAHM and wanted to help! I wanted to create a job where I could still be home and have some control over the time. This bred my Holiday Cinnamon Roll business.
As mentioned before, cinnamon rolls are a tradition in my own family. So I thought how fun it would be to get to share this tradition with other local families in our area and be able to help out financially during the holidays. If you have other baked goods you love, you can always do that, too! This post is specially for my cinnamon rolls and how I got them out the door to over 250 people!

Where did I sell?

Where I used to live we had a very active mom community on Facebook where people could buy, sell, ask questions, etc. This helped me get the word out and drum up some excitement. I would share my cinnamon rolls on Nov. 1st and spread out my pickups throughout November and December. I would post the same graphic each year so it was recognized and give information on the post about my families own tradition around cinnamon rolls, the price, and tell them to comment below and I would message them details.
If you don’t have an active mom community like this, you can use so many different avenues. Facebook marketplace, Instagram, partner with local businesses or non profits and donate a portion of you profits to them for helping to promote you. Local holiday craft fairs are a great option too! You can bring samples to try and take orders that day.

How to communicate these days?

Back then I would message people on Facebook. These days if you get enough people that would be difficult as it will flag you as spam. I recommend using and AI tool for this if it gets too large. You can set up a word people will comment and it will message them all the details you set up through the tool. Find an AI tool compatible with whatever platform you use to get the word out!
If you don’t think you will get a ton, you can message yourself individually. In the information make sure you include the pickup details, payment information, and thawing/baking instructions.

Payment

You can do payment multiple ways but I have a strong opinion on this. In the first two years of doing this I allowed people to pay cash when picking up. I would not recommend this as you will get some no shows and that can be frustrating. I would take payment up front and use Venmo or Zelle payments. This will save you a lot of heartache and time because once people pay they will make much more of an effort than if they haven’t. My last two years went so much smoother this way.
Depending on your state as well, you will need to report this as income if it goes over a certain amount. Having it electronically will help make sure you get his accurate. Make sure before you sell to check your state’s laws about selling baked goods out of your home too! Cottage Laws vary greatly.
I charged $25 dollars per pan. Each pan had 12 good sized cinnamon rolls. For my area, this price point made sense once I factored in all the time and ingredients I spent. It was actually lower than what most restaurants or other bakeries were selling for. But do you research on your own area!

Where did I get my ingredients/materials?

Once all my orders are confirmed and payment is received, next stop is figuring out ingredients. This will vary too based on how many orders you have. For November and December I would have anywhere from 100-125 pans each month so for me Costco made the most sense. You might have to adjust this depending on how many orders you get.
Costco has the least expensive flour, sugar, oil, yeast, vanilla, powdered sugar, cinnamon, regular cane sugar, and they had the size pans I used as well for a very inexpensive price. I would also put the icing in sandwich sized Ziploc bags that I bought. I would recommend Costco for all these items listed about if you have over 25 orders. Milk and butter are the two that you can find elsewhere for less than Costco in my experience.
The only item I would source from amazon was the lids that went with the pans. I bought the 9×13 half deep pans from Costco and I would get 30 for $6.99. Not sure what the cost is today but if it’s anywhere around there, its the best deal. The lids that matched I bought on amazon as they didn’t come with them.

Make the dough

You will have to do the math to decide how many of these pans you need to crank out each week. Each batch of cinnamon roll dough will make about 3 pans of the 9×13 half deep. I would make 2 batches of dough at a time to speed up the process. I would start by making 2 batches of dough in the morning and get them all the way through the process. Then before I went to bed I would make another 2 batches but would set them in the fridge before they were at the rolling out process (all those instructions are on the recipe card, see bottom of post).
This all depends on how many orders you have any how many days a week you can spend baking. I find getting in any more is difficult but you can do what you need to. You can always do less too if you don’t have as many orders.

Assembly/Storage

Once the rolls are shaped and in the pans, I would cover them with the lids I got from amazon, and then store in the freezer right away. According to the directions, once they are shaped they need to rise again. I don’t do a second rise and instead will freeze. The people who buy them will thaw and bake so they get fresh cinnamon rolls.
I did have an extra freezer in my basement the last year I did this but before that I did not. I used my own freezer and could fit 10 pans in there at a time. But during this time of year I couldn’t use the freezer at all so if that isn’t an option I recommend you get a second one. I found a really old one someone was giving away for free! It worked for what I needed, it doesn’t need to be fancy.

Pickups

For my own sanity, I batched pickups into groups of 10. Otherwise it was a nightmare for me to keep track of and that is the amount of pans my freezer could hold at once. You can do whatever works for you! Because I had so many I would have pickup days set through out the week at specific times. For example it would be Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 3-7pm. I would have a list outside with their names on it, how many pans, and it they wanted extra icing or not.
I gave each person 1 generous bag of icing. Some people wanted more so I charged $1 for extra. They could pay cash for this if they wanted it last minute. I would use a large cooler, fill the bottom with ice, and set the pans out on my porch with the list taped to the top. Because I live in the Midwest this worked well for me as it was cold outside too. You might have to adjust this if you live someplace warm! There are lots of different ways you could do pickups.

Thawing/Baking Instructions

How I told people to thaw/bake them is to set the frozen pan out on the counter overnight. Get it out by 9pm and leave it until about 7/8am. By then the rolls should be thawed, warm, and puffy. Then they could bake at 350 for the allotted time.
In my message to them when they ordered, I would put a picture of what a thawed, risen cinnamon roll looked like. I pointed out what they needed to look for before baking. Baking them too early will ensure they won’t rise as they yeast won’t be activated because it’s still frozen. I made this section very detailed for them and it worked great! The first year I didn’t and I had a few people who it didn’t turn out well.
If that happens, I would replace their pans. I only had this happen a handful of times where people baked too early! But the more specific you can get here the better! I always let them know the yeast was frozen and not active. The rolls need to thaw and become warm/puffy which means the yeast is now awake and ready to be baked.

Income/giving

Besides the first year, I capped it much lower since I had no idea what I was doing, I would bring in around $5,000 between the two months. This was more than enough to help with my families expenses and I always wanted to be able to do more. This time of year can be so hard for many and since I had extra, here is what I did.
I partnered with a few different local moms who were doing some amazing things around the holidays. One was a local mom collecting toys for the local children’s hospital. I would have her send me the list and I would buy over $1000 of toys for the kids. I loved being able to do this!
Another way I gave back was to partner with local non profits in our area who were also supporting families with necessities they needed for the holidays. I would just donate online to many of these and would do a few hundred dollars.
The last way, is because our mom group was so active, I would see different needs in the area. I would just drop off some money, food, toys, clothes, whatever the need was to the person’s home. It was so rewarding to be able to give back. Especially around the holidays when already tight budgets would become more difficult for so many.

The End Result

Turning my families holiday tradition into a profitable business was such a joy! I loved that I was able to help out not just my own family but also so man others around me. My gifts weren’t huge but if everyone did just a little bit, it would really add up to so much.
I hope this gave you a good starting point if you are considering selling cinnamon rolls out of your home! There are so many ways you could do this, so feel free to get creative and adjust as you need to. I hope you see this as just a template to build what you need!
This can be such a fun tradition to bless your own community with during the holidays. I hope you find joy in doing this and many blessings as you bake away!

Need the Cinnamon Roll Recipe? 

My cinnamon roll recipe went out to our community in our holiday newsletter! If you would like to opt in and get your copy today you can click here. Cinnamon rolls aren’t your thing? That’s ok! You can find tons of our favorite holiday recipes on our site. Click here to look around!