A sugar-baker was the owner of a sugar house, a factory for the refining of raw sugar from the Barbados. Sugar refining would normally be combined with sugar trading, which was a lucrative business. The architectural historian Kerry Downes gives an example of one sugar baker's house in Liverpool being estimated to bring in £40,000 a year in trade from the Barbados.
One of the sugar baker's house was estimated to bring in 50,000 a year. 