A couple thoughts:
Before you start a business plan, I suggest defining your goal and focusing on it. Reading you posts, some sound like you want it to be a hobby and maybe cover your costs and others sound like you want to make money.
With respect to insurance, remember, as a sole proprietor, your personal assets are on the line if something goes wrong and you don't have insurance to cover it. Even things that might not seem like they need insurance - bikes for example. What if your delivery kid on a bike gets hit by a car...
Even if it's a hobby, it's taxable income. The IRS isn't going to care if you call it a donation, and I'm guessing the State of California won't either. Don't forget to put the earnings in your tax return. I don't know the law in CA, but you may have to collect and remit sales tax too.
If you're going to both bake and deliver, it may need to be an appointment system - that or people need to be prepared for the possibility of long waits.
Think about your operating hours because you're tied to your house when you're open - business or no business.
About the just a hobby to cover costs or do I want to make money. I want to make money, a few hours a day and 10 pizzas I'm not going to be able to retire off it. I wouldn't be doing it just for the money, but if I could do something I enjoy and at the end of the day pocket $100 I'd consider that a good day. I am focused on doing this right.
How about only making take away pizza for friends, neighbours, and acquaintances?
You make them pizza, they come pick it up and give you a contribution to offset your costs? Maybe a naive proposition knowing how people are. But at least like that you're not really a commercial operation (?) and you can get a lot of practice on the pizza making.
At least for a start, if you see that it's successful you can start making plans about if you really like being in the food business (which as others have noted can be detrimental to your health, sanity and personal life), make a business plan, etc, etc.
this is kind of what I'm doing now, minus the contribution part. Been giving pizzas away to friends and neighbors as ginny pigs while I figure out my dough and how to cook them properly. As of the last batch I'm done with the freebies, they've all had 2 - 4 pizzas so if they like them enough to still eat them, they can donate to the cause. 3 said they'd give me $ for future ones, haven't spoken to the others. Feedback has been positive from everyone though, my roommates brother has eaten 4, and he told her "his pizzas are better than Little Ceasers" lol not exactly a shining compliment, but LC's one of his spots, so I took it as he was impressed. It's not exactly hard to out pizza LC or the Hut.
Here's a couple of things to consider from someone whose doing something similar to what you're doing.
Will you be able to get everything you need consistently ?
Depending on how many pizzas you will make you're going to run through a certain amount of products.
If you're going through a distributor will you make the minimum order? If you're not going to going through a distributor, more than likely you'll eventually run into problems sourcing your ingredients. The other day I had to go to more than 5 shops to get what I needed. Things were either sold out, on order, or not up to snuff. Luckily where I am I have enough speciality stores I can go to, but it is still a problem. Doing this 7 days a week not going through a distributor you are going to have this problem.
Will you have enough time and storage space to make your dough ?
This question is pretty simple.
Depending on your work flow if using cold fermentation, or room temperature etc etc there's so many variables you're going to need a place to store the dough. If you're going the cold fermentation route do you have enough space to always have dough? Are you going to have time to make it also having to source everything?
Have you accounted for errors ?
You make mistakes. You're going to rip a dough occasionally, you're going to overcook a pie.
These things happen. If you're going to sell 10 pizzas a day you need to make more than 10. You cannot expect everything to go right. Pizza making is like a chain link. It's all attached and if one link goes it all goes quick.
Just some things to consider....
Good points, I'll definitely make mistakes and kill pizzas. my Doughmate boxes can hold I think 8 250g balls. I figure I could make 14 at a time, and if I somehow don't screw any of the 10 up I can put left over 4 in the freezer. And you're probably right about running out of stuff, some things I seem to always see at the store when I don't need them, undoubtedly won't be there when I actually do need it. I don't think there are any of those cash and carry places near me. The only distributor I see around here is Sysco, and best I can tell they don't deal with single people. And even if they did it's probably ginormous quantities. I don't need 12 5# bags of shredded Mozzarella. There is a R.D. about 20 minutes away, and smart and final. I just picked up a 50# bag of high gluten flour and 3 cans of 7/11 tomatoes. Fortunately the smart and final and 2 really nice grocery stores are within a mile and a half of me. *knock on wood* I've never not been able to get fresh mozzarella or a good pepperoni stick. I do have a few things on my mock up draft menu that I 100% won't be able to find locally, and could struggle even to find online all the time.
The fridge point's good too, I currently have 4 doughmate artisan boxes and plan to get 2 more and I'm looking for a smaller size dedicated fridge to put them in. I figured with a 72 hour fermentation I should always be able to have 14 dough balls ready. I'll destroy some for sure, but I can't make 10 successful pizzas with 14 balls I need to find something else.
A serious big THANK YOU to everyone who's replied. I'm going to find some new neighbors, and call all the people I've made pizza's for so far and ask them to tell 3 or 4 friends if they'd like to try a couple free pizzas next month. By Sunday finish making my initial menu and get some nice ones printed up online. Get a working web site up for the ordering, then I can start June 1st with a 1 month run of free pizzas. Where people can tip if they feel inclined. if I have 20-30 people who get 2-3 pizzas each over the month I can get food feedback on what I need to change.
Still got a TON to figure out, but at least on the pizza end I can start getting more feedback on what people think of them.
