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Easy weekend job ideas that you can turn into a local business

7 Easy Weekend Job Ideas

If work takes precedence from 9 - 5, Monday to Friday, it can be difficult to start a side hustle that can potentially evolve into a full-time business - making weekends jobs the perfect solution.

Starting a weekend job not only helps to bring in a bit of extra cash (that always helps) it also puts you in front of new people and new opportunities.

A job pays for the work you do. A business pays for the work you've already done.

It may be that what starts out as a weekend gig ends up becoming a full-time business as more and more people hear about your products or services.

Weekend Job Quick Start

Get setup for a part time weekend job with everything you need to snag your first gig.

  • Weekend Jobs by Indeed

  • Weekend Job Search

    Quickly and easily search for a range of home employment opportunities using Indeed.

    Enter a keyword to begin a search for weekend employment opportunities, or check out our weekend job ideas below for ideas that can potentially grow from a way to earn a bit of extra cash on the weekends into a full-time small business.

So even if you can't find the time to squeeze in extra work hours during the week don't give up on your dreams of becoming a successful entrepreneur. Every great company had to start from scratch sometime - and the weekend is just a good a place as any.

It's time to be inspired by our list of job ideas that can easily start out part-time on the weekend (without costing a lot of money to get going) and grow into a business over time.

Yard Sale Guru

Exploit the gap between sellers and buyers by flipping 2nd hand goods
Very often people who are selling items via a yard sale (or online, locally) are doing so because they either need cash quickly or they need to get rid of stuff quickly (i.e. they are moving and can't take everything with them). This means you can often negotiate very good prices for items you want to flip via your own online store, local classifieds/portal, eBay or Amazon.

Good negotiation skills aside, if you also have refurbishment and repair skills it's possible to pick up damaged items for a fraction of the price you can sell them for after a little repair work.

There is a surprisingly large gap between what people will pay for stuff other people don't want.

Your job is to find and buy those items that are highly undervalued by their current owners, fix 'em up (if necessary), and flip them for a good profit. The difference might amount to hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for big-ticket items like furniture.

Grow this job into a business

Instead of passively hunting for great deals as and when there are local yard or estate sales near you, become more proactive about finding new stock to sell. Offer a removal service to estates or households that need to get rid of of large amounts of furniture and items but don't have time to sell everything themselves.

This gives you first option to buy potentially valuable items you want to sell for profit. Sell the rest of the goods for a commission from the estate and charge for pickups, removals and dumping to cover basic costs.

Party Caterer

Provide on-site food preparation and catering for weekend parties
Weekends are the time for seeing friends, having parties and enjoy summertime barbecues in the evenings. Standing round a fire barbecuing can be fun when there are only a few guests but the amount of work quickly gets out of hand for bigger events.

If you have mad barbecue skills offer them to locals who would love to have first-class barbecue prepared at their home while they entertain guests.

Decide beforehand with your clients what foods they would like prepared and how they want it done. Handle everything for them, from buying the food to setting up at the venue (i.e. firing up the grill, setting up plates, cutlery, napkins, etc), cooking, serving and cleaning up afterwards.

Grow this job into a business

Use your home party catering gigs to promote your services for larger events. Weddings and corporate weekend functions could mean catering for hundreds of people at a time with much bigger budgets and commensurately larger profits. Hire and train more people to manage larger events or possibly multiple events at the same time.

Market Stall Foodie

Prepare delicious food for a weekend market
If your town or neighborhood has one or more local markets on a Saturday or Sunday rent a stall and start selling something tasty and special. This works great if your family has a recipe that everyone loves and has a bit of a backstory that you can add to your branding and decorations. People love great food that comes with a great backstory.

It might mean spending Friday evening slow cooking your family's secret oxtail stew, or baking hilarious cupcakes, but food at markets often comes at a significant markup because there is a captive audience who are willing to pay a premium for explore a variety of new tastes. This makes for potentially decent profit margins on the portions you sell.

Grow this job into a business

Selling food is one of those great businesses where the product is the advertising. Every time someone buys something you are also advertising directly to that customer - exactly when they are enjoying their food and are most likely to consider buying more.

Print your brand and website address onto napkins or containers for instant marketing.

Offer additional options (like bulk purchases) that can be ordered via your website for pickup or delivery.

Local Attraction Guide

Create a memorable tour of local attractions
Every town, no matter how small, has a history with landmarks and local stories to tell that can be weaved into a truly unique experience for travelers and tourists.

Package the tour into something fun and engaging that people will find interesting regardless of the subject matter. The trick is to entertain people while informing them.

One of the funniest and most memorable tours I took was a 5 minute bus-ride of a town with one street.

Grow this job into a business

Once you have a regular stream of bookings turn that into additional profits by offering local businesses the opportunity to sell to your groups. For example, a local wine farm or farmers' market might pay a set amount to have a tour group stop by their venue. B&Bs, hotels and other accommodation might also pay for bookings generated from your recommendations.

Events Cleanup

Clean up houses and venues after events
With a lot of people visiting friends and family, having barbecues, throwing parties and generally having a great time over the weekend there is inevitably a lot of cleaning up to do on Saturday and Sunday morning. Often these chores are accompanied by a hangover from overindulging the night before. This is where you step in and help out.

Offer a service that comes around on a Saturday or Sunday morning and cleans up half-empty bottles and glasses, wipes counters, washes dishes, takes out the trash and generally makes the place spotless and clean like last night never happened.

Grow this job into a business

Find local venues that need to clean up after bigger functions like weddings and corporate events and offer to outsource this work (this should prove more cost-effective since they might not need to keep a full-time staff on the payroll). Budgets for these events are larger and you will be able to build in a larger profit margin on bigger jobs.

Best of all, most of the work will still happen on the weekend so you can potentially grow quite big while still enjoying the security of your full time job.

Personalized Picnics

Provide custom picnic baskets and blankets
What better way is there to spend a lazy summer afternoon than with a picnic basket full of food, drinks, snacks and treats while enjoying the company of family and friends? The only problem is that preparing and packing all that food can be a bit of a chore and quite time consuming. That's where you come in.

Offer a service that provides custom picnic baskets people can order during the week and have ready for pickup (or delivery) on Saturday or Sunday morning.

Create an online menu or app allowing customers to check off the items they'd like included, or order a set picnic menu. Pack their basket with everything ordered and charge extra plus a deposit for the basket, blankets, cushions, cutlery and cups. Customers can return everything to you by Monday in time to prepare for the following weekend's orders.

Grow this job into a business

Instead of catering for individuals, families and smaller group of friends start building relationships with local tourist attractions (i.e. wine farms) and events organizers to increase your order sizes from one or two baskets to ten, twenty and up.

Combine picnics with an outdoor event like an evening show on an inflatable outdoor projector screen.

Find a beautiful local picnic spot somewhere on the outskirts of town and offer monthly picnic events along with some music or entertainment to drive demand for your picnic baskets. This will also offer additional channels of revenue around those events.

Fun Fitness Classes

Offer fun fitness classes on the weekend
For a lot of people finding time to exercise during their busy work-week is a real struggle. The thought of going to the gym to mindlessly slog away on the stair-master in your precious time off (over the weekend) is not that appealing for most either.

Take advantage of this common lifestyle problem by offering classes that not only help people get fit but give them something fun to do, teach them a new skill or take them on an adventure at the same time. Here are a few ideas:

  • Beginners boxing class in the park
  • Parkour lessons in town
  • Obstacle course team building
  • Stand up paddling (SUP) lessons

Active classes like this will quickly add an important social aspect that many customers will value. Meeting new people by sharing a common activity like this is a fantastic way to make new friends and your classes could grow quickly as more and more people realize this.

Grow this job into a business

Find people with interesting skills and hire them to take weekend classes under your brand in order to diversify class offerings to appeal to a wider range of people. Pay instructors a fixed salary, perhaps with a commission for growing their classes, and the rest is profit.

Offer additional classes during the week once there is enough demand.

What do you think of these ideas? Have you ever tried to turn a weekend job into a business? Hopefully this list has provided a little bit of inspiration for a job or potential business that you can start in your own neighborhood.

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