CeeTee, yeah even though eggs, and milk aren't part of your household. What do you do with the left over eggs? Freeze them I hope for the next cake. Is that a # of butter? The dream whip, and PS you use that much each cake?

Mike

Oh gosh... it can cost me that much too and I do get some supplies in bulk... so I understand how prices can get up there.

I use higher end ingredients... vanilla beans for vanilla cakes, Ghirardelli or Sharffen Berger chocolate, king aurthur flour, my icing uses a pound of butter to cover and fill an 8" cake alone... it adds up really quickly. If I have to buy vanilla at the grocery store it costs me $1.25 per TBSP. I usually make my own, but in a pinch it happens.

Even if eggs are a staple in your house they still mark against the cost of a cake... but if you buy the dozen and only use 4... then you can't mark the whole dozen against the one cake. You will use the other 8 somewhere, but not for the cake in questions, so technically they whole dozen can't be applied. I understand you have to buy them special, but that's how it goes.

I spend $100 easy on wedding cakes all the time.

Supplies x2... HA! That doesn't account for your time and expertise. I think we all hope to make more than $0.50/hour for the hard work that goes into a cake.

I can usually dump off the eggs and milk on my sis before they spoil, but not always. When I calculate the cost of a cake I do only factor what I use, but that doesn't change the fact I still have to shell out $18+ out of pocket for ingredients I otherwise do not keep on hand for a "simple cake" before I even turn on my oven. I'm gonna want at least that amount back before I even factor in for my time and cost of other non-ingredient supplies.

When I started doing cakes I would sell them for about $20-30 for a fully decorated torted/filled cake, no matter what size it was or how much I spent, because I based my prices off what they cost at the grocery store. I learned pretty quickly that it was a stupid thing to do. (Oh, what a cake newbie I was...) It wasn't the cost of ingredients or supplies that was really killing me tho, it was the time. I don't 'just whip out' cakes. I usually take two nights to do a cake; one night to bake, the other to ice and decorate. This is just the average for a 'simple cake' that has no hand-made decor or fancy extras.

So, average $18 base out-of-pocket cost and average 8 hours of my time to work on a "Simple Cake"...sorry, I'm not gonna turn around and sell it for $40 and think I'm being fair to myself or the person who is buying my cake. Tried that, and it only made doing cakes a thankless chore and no fun at all.

I don't try to sell cakes anymore, and haven't for a long time. If people want a cake from me I'm up front about my costs and my time and I don't get offended if they change their mind. I'd much rather they go to a grocery store or a specialty baker than to me. Instead I do cakes just for fun when I feel like it and when I have the money to spare. It's my hobby, not my second job, and I don't want to supply cheap/free cake to the city at large.


tl;dr - doesn't matter what the base cost it, I 'll charge what I want to make it worth my while. And yes, it IS possible to spend $25 on ingredients if you are a Suzy Home-Baker.

I agree with Jeanne and Larkin....my costs are up there too. I do have access to a local baker's wholesaler but honestly I'm not crazy about a lot of their wholesale brands.

So my premium ingredients add up. I don't start with a mix, everything from my cakes, filling, icings and fondant are made from scratch.

My actual cost is approx $1 per serving. My fondant, carrot and death by chocolate cakes costs me just a little more then $1 per serving to make.

Oh yeah, ingredients are costly for us small home based bakers.

I don't sell anything, I'm starting just now to look into the legalities, I just saw that earlier in the thread, and i'm baking a ton this week. i sat down w/ all my receipts and figured out, down to the penny, how much it would cost ($.11 an egg, etc.). And i know that if I were selling, those 120 cookies would be between $240-360. It pains me to see ppl underselling themselves.

Sweetheart, I need to move blimmin COUNTRIES!!
I look at so many great recipes on here, but our box cakes cost about $5.70 each, as much as the cake would cost to make from scratch.

I agree about the labor and time spent on a cake, however what might take me 8 hrs may only take another decorator 3.

So that right there needs to be considered when someone starts these vague pricing threads.

You're not really charging for INGrEDIENTS and TIME. You are charging for TALENT. And if your product is EXCLUSIVE, then you can charge even more. People who pay higher end prices for cakes are paying for the WOW FACTOR - in looks and taste. It doesn't matter how much the ingredients cost or how much time it takes. Of course, when you are calculating prices, you must consider these first, but the amount of profit you make depends on how much your product is worth. Namely, does it taste good? Does it look good? How good? $2 a serving good or $10 a serving good?

It's very hard to convince someone that they can't calculate cost based on a "price per hour" rate....that's how they've always been paid and that's how they expect to get paid for making cakes.

I'm not saying they're right, it's just what I'm hearing from some of these hobby bakers who are starting to "sell" cakes.

Businesses do take labor costs into consideration when determining pricing. That's why Joe the Tailor charges more to make you a hand stitched shirt than the giant corporation that employs Chinese children at machines does. And the baker with the giant oven can, and does sell a cake for less...as supermarkets, BJs and Walmart all illustrate.

I can charge more for the time it takes me to hand make 100 tiny pearls than if I used dragees because my work has a specific value. Many people will pay for the right to serve a cake that let's them brag to their guests, "and he made every pearl by hand!" If you run into a person who's not willing to pay for that, then you can either find another customer who will, or switch to dragees. But labor has a value that should be part of your cost, just like flour.

My price is based on % except for detailed work, i.e. gumpaste flowers, fondant figures, pearls etc....then I add a labor charge on top of my base price.


At my salon I have a young stylist (1 yr out of school) who takes double the time to complete a haircut, perm, color etc. This person needs to step up their time because in realty their taking up a chair that could be bringing in double the money for me. Time is money.

dkelly, you're right .... folks need to get out of the "employee" mentality (who gets paid by the hour) and start thinking in "business owner" mentality (who gets paid by the job).

A mechanic has a book from (let's say) GM that tells him it should take him 4 hours to do this particular repair. The mechanic bills his time at 4 hours. If he runs into a problem and it takes him 6 hours, he's lost money. If he's a dang good mechanic and can pump it out in 3 hours, he's making MORE profit. So there are other industries who use pre-determined "guidelines" to determine how long a job should take.

(Just like I use the Wilton Wedding chart as my predetermined guideline for how many servings a cake will serve.)

Another cog in the wheel of cake-decoratoring-paid-by-the-hour-thinking is that the better you get, then the faster you get ..... so in paid-by-the-hour thinking, you are making less money. BUT ......! The better you get, then the BETTER you ARE, ergo you have a higher value "per hour". Sylvia Weinstock can no doubt whip out a masterpiece way faster than me, but she doesn't make less money since it takes her less "hours" to do it.

Stop thinking like an employee. Start thinking like a business owner. Not everything has a "by the hour" value, such as artscallion's example of the pearls. Yes, she took more hours to make the pearls but there's a definite value in the "every pearl by hand!" factor, too!

I wasn't meaning By-The-Hour wage with my questions, but I can see how it can be interpreted that way. Time and Talent go hand as far as I'm concerned, so I don't get how charging for talent and not time is different.

On the (now very very) rare occasions where I do sell a cake, I'll admit I don't think of it in a Business Owner sense (as Debi put it). I think of it as "Do I have the time, and if I don't, is this worth sacrificing something else in order to free up the time in order to make the sell?" Cakes don't put a roof over my head, but a paid cake does take away from what little free time I do have away from my main job.

I really don't care if a cake that takes me 10 hours to decorate and $20 in supplies takes Baker X 4 hours to decorate and $8 in supplies. I'm not gonna charge based on *their* time and cost, I'm charging based on *mine*. I could be more expensive or less expensive than Baker X, that really doesn't concern me. I'm a hobbyist, not a professional. A professional with a shop has at least 40 hours a week dedicated to strictly cakes and a set-up to support it. I don't. I'd say I have about 28 hours a week on average (If I don't work any overtime) that's truly free time, not booked up for work, sleep, or obligations. Any cakes I do will have to fall in that time frame.

My time is the most precious and rarest commodity I have, so if you want me to use my talents for you, you'll have to be willing to pay what I think it's worth. I ain't giving up time I could be spending with friends and family so I can spend all weekend making a huge cake with only a handful of change and a messy kitchen to show for it because a customer wanted an Ace of Cakes design for a Wal-Mart price.

May not be the Correct or Best way of determining a price, but it works for me.I'm way more than happy to be more expensive than the specialty bakeries. To use Debi's analogy again: I may know how to change the oil in a car, but I can't do it as fast, efficently, and the same way as Jiffy Lube, so I sure ain't gonna charge Jiffy Lube's prices for my work!

Well, I have asked this question and I'm not ashamed to say it. I am not a bakery...I do this as a "hobby" and I love it, but since I have often "under-charged" w/o realizing or knowing it, I come to ask those of you that I admire and I look up to if I charged too little. I don't really know what the issue is, quite frankly, since this is a site for asking questions and learning as you go. I am thankful to all of you for your advice and expertise over the last several months and I would've really shorted myself even more had I not had some of you say "Hey, you shoulda charged a LOT more!"

The "issue" is, we're trying to get people who do ask

"How much SHOULD I charge"

to instead ask

"What method should I use to figure out pricing my cakes?"

That way once you learn just what goes into pricing you'll be able to price every cake you do from that point on.

It's like when our kids are doing their Math homework and they don't "get" a particular problem. If we just give them the answer without showing them how to get that answer we aren't helping them at all.

It's important to know this for yourself.

(you and yourself being generic, not you in particular)

dkelly - that is one of the best posts explaining this issue. Very simply put and honest without any "undertones" that could be misunderstood. Thanks!

For mine I have been using the "what will the market hold" as my primary starting place...I have been steadily increasing prices the last couple of years, especially with my 3D cakes.

I keep track of my expenses monthly. I loosely estimate my "wage per hour" each cake (just quickly estimate in my head) to make sure I didn't cheat myself. I've also kind of learned to price my work as far as what I WANT to have. I mean...I have a semi-standard pricing for tiered cakes but alot of cakes I have to sort of price "per job". I look at the cake...think about how difficult its going to be or how easy its going to be...how time consuming it will be...and then give it a price based on how much its worth to me to take time away from my home and family and do the job.

I guess its hard to explain unless you've done it awhile...I'm not saying I'm perfect in pricing and actually sometimes I think I've gotten a little greedy and gone a bit too high....but other people are fine with the prices so...I keep them as they are for now. But it would be almost impossible to explain to a newbie how I do my pricing because its based on MY area...and MY costs....and MY time in regards to how my family is set up and things....

....and also I will say MY abilities too. I don't have the abilities of Sylvia Weinstock, but I also am not a newbie either. So I can't price like Sylvia, but I should definitely be pricing closer to the higher end cake studios in my area, because that's about how I do my work. (Well okay, sometimes...haha...or I'd like to think so I guess!) The only bad thing about pricing questions is that its difficult to put a price on a cake on the forum without mentioning the skill of the decorator. And in some cases, that can be awkward!

So really...all of us price very differently, so many variables.... I know at the beginning I was checking prices on here, and I think its valuable for us to point others in the right direction...but it really does come down to LOCAL market, LOCAL costs, PERSONAL situations, and PERSONAL ability.

(Oh yeah...and the faster I get...the better it is! I sure don't lower my prices because I'm faster...I enjoy the extra "time off" and extra "wages per hour"! I love my home oven with three racks, that's for sure...)

I want an oven with three racks.