I am just starting out and have no business yet......however I can foresee this coming up down the road when I start charging.....

Has anyone ever argued with you over the cake serving sizes? I know that when I first entered the bakers side of the cake world I was shocked that a 9" round cake is supposed to feed 32 people....so I assume anyone I would make a cake for would have a similar point of view.

Has anyone ever had the situation arise where someone argued/complained about the calculated serving sizes???

How did you handle it???

And did you use Wilton Charts to determine your serving sizes??

I hope some fun stories will come out of this......I love reading them ever so much!!! Thanks in advance for any responses!!!!

I use the Wilton Wedding chart for everything. When I tell them an 8" cake serves 24, I also tell them how that serving size is determined. I have a styrofoam cake on hand where I show them, with an ink pen, how to cut the cake to achieve those servings.

Here's a link on how to cut a cake to get those servings. Feel free to print it & hand it to your customers or to refer them to the link: http://www.cateritsimple.com/id10.html

All we are doing is basing our pricing on a pre-determined serving size. ALL foods have a predetermined servings size. (Read an "nutritional info" label on any food product in the grocery store. A small can of Campbell's Tomato Soup, for example, says it serves 2.5 people. I say they're fulla crap, but they've predetermined what the serving size is.

Our customers are welcome to cut the cake in half and serve it to 2 people if they want, but the price of the cake is based on 24 industry-standard servings.

The standard answer is, "If you plan to cut them bigger, you might consider getting a bigger cake." There is no arguing. The price of the cake is based on the industry standard serving size.

KFC sells a bucket of 12 pcs of chicken and they say it serves 6 people. In my house, a 12-pc will serve 3 people. But I'm not going to get it cheaper just because I'm serving fewer people. If my family eats like Jethro BOdine, then I need to plan accordingly and order more chicken. KFC isn't going to throw in a few extra pieces for free because we have "healthy appetites"!

Lots of discussion on this if you search forums. Here's a particularly good thread.

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-646680-serving.html+size

In short:
Base your price per serving on the Wilton chart. It's standard.

Your customer can cut however many pieces they want out of the cake, but that won't change your price. If they want more cake, then they need to order more cake.

I have some styrofoam "cake slices" that are the exact size that a 1"x2"x4" slice of cake would be and also a 1-1/2"x2"x4" for party servings. I show them these and then tell them, you can get X amount of THESE from THIS cake, if they want to cut bigger slices then they order more cake. No complaints!

By the way I've been doing this for 2 yrs. now and my last order was order #456 (if you figure that out for 2 yrs. that's roughly 1 cake every 2 days..so I do a LOT of cakes)
and I've only had ONE...yes ONE person say that slice wasn't big enough...they also said, we're HUGE cake eaters and we KNOW it! So she ordered more cake, no biggie and no complaints!

I use the wilton chart and round it down to the nearest 5 slices...so it says a 8" round serves 24, I say it serves 20, a 9" serves 32, I say 30, and so on.

I think the PP's gave great advice! When I heard that size at first I thought "WHAT?" 1x2?? That can't be true but later I remembered I was thinking SHEET CAKE. You may remind your buyers of that because I'll bet, like me, lots of them only have experience with sheet cakes and that's what they invision. When I thought about it and it was going to be 3 or 4 inches tall it makes a BIG difference.

Wow, thanks so much for the responses!!!.......the Styrofoam example cake is a good idea i'll have to remember that if *crosses fingers* I am able to achieve my dream one day and have my own shop!!!

I also like the idea of handing out printed cutting instructions.....thanks Indydebi!!

Also, Indydebi, I love love LOVE your input on the serving sizes on soup and such.....I NEVER thought about it that way!!!! You always have such good "lines" to feed to customers should they get difficult!!!

I have had a few "remarks" about the serving sizes but when I pointed out that a standard serving size of one of my cakes has "approximately" 250 calories and that by eating one of those "Jethro Bodine" size pieces, they could easily be scarfing down between 750 - 1000 calories in one sitting... well, they didn't say much else.

I can only remember one person asking about sizes being smal in some 30 yrs of doing cakesl. Actually they came in and pointed out a 12x4" round, saying we want a cake that size.
Knowing that many people ask for a 'full' (or 1/2) sheet cake when they only need to serve say 10-20 people I asked how many people....the answer was something like 8 so I pointed out that they only needed an 8x4 or 10x2.......well they *insisted* on the 12" because 'they love cake' No haggling on price.....just the size

You could always use wood too, like CCer MikeRowesHunny did:


http://www.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=gallery&file=displayimage&pid=88648

I know when I worked as a decorator at one of those retail "giants", people would ask me how many servings a 1/4, 1/2, or full sheet would serve. We are told to say 1/4 sheet serves 24-2"x2" servings, 1/2 sheet 48 and full sheet 96. I would always add my own 2 cents worth and tell them, but you know we Americans never eat the suggested serving sizes so a 1/4 sheet you'll probably get 15 to 20 servings.

rushing....Thanks for posting the link to that photo. Very helpful!!