really screw us home bakers who are charging appropriately! I'm legal which I'm sure most that sell are not. It really does get old. Do these bakers not realize they are giving cake away? Sure you are super busy and have to turn orders away but why would you want to run yourself ragged just to break even? In the meantime screwing everyone else in the area. I've had so many lately trying to "bargain" with me on price or sound like they just had a coronary when I gave them the price. I personally would rather be sitting in a nice cool pool then to make a cake for nothing! Please please.. LEGAL home bakers charge accordingly!!!

ok... I feel better now!

I am a home baker but I charge more than most bakeries! I think what happens with most home bakers is they dont know what to charge becasue they dont have the expenses to pay. I feel why should I get less if I am a home baker I want more! I am more flexible!

It all depends on the area i think, Im from the uk anyway, So i dont count lol, But i know if i charged, What i think is appropriate, A good deal for me AND the buyer . . Id never make one single sale! I have to be cheaper just to stay afloat, Does that mean im screwing other bakers who charge more than i do ? Screw the others, i charge what i have to charge to keep myself going, and im not going to feel bad for any one who thinks otherwise.

I am in the same situation. I am friends with two other home bakers in my area, and they both charge less than I do. I recently did a purse cake with a gumpaste shoe and pearls )in my pics). The cake was two different flavors, and would have fed 50 before I started carving. Both of the other bakers knew all of this info and said they would charge $75 for it. Their reason for not charging more is that people won't pay it. They are always booked solid. It doesn't make sense to me. They would pay it or go to Walmart if they would stop charging so little.

I know what is appropriate for my area and I started charging low to get started. I was booked week after week! Which was great but once I raised my pricing I was out of that "burn out" stage which made my job more enjoyable. After a couple of years I can finally say my prices are competitive with the area as well as most bakeries. Charging too low sets the standards/prices for others. I think.. I just need a vacation.. a really LONG vacation! LOL

I've been torn on the subject. I personally am not one who would spend what I charge to make a cake, BUT what we do is so different than the typical bakery. If someone wants a basic cake (which isn't that fun for me to make) let them go somewhere else. I want to make cakes I can be proud of. I have to make it worth my time. Would anyone else work at the hourly rate we do??

A lot of the time, when people decide to get legal they'll realize how little they've really been earning once all of their expenses are added in, and they'll start charging accordingly. There's always going to be a craigslist cheapo who undercuts everybody, but they won't be around long if they're ripping themselves off.

I think these problems come up when a home baker doesn't view what they're doing as a business. They're selling cakes "on the side" or doing it to make a few extra bucks, and feel that making an extra, say, $50 per week over what they pay in materials is profit in their pocket. They don't look at the fact that they're making like half minimum wage not counting the extra utility use and incidental expense (soap, paper towels, etc).
Unfortunately it's because, well, not everyone is cut out to be a business(wo)man. Most people don't have it in 'em. They don't have the business sense that a Bill Gates or an indydebi has, for example, and they don't have the brass cakeballs it takes to be a business owner. How many times do we see posts here about needing a backbone when it comes to charging what a cake is worth? It takes one heck of a backbone to not cave to customers who want a custom cake for Walmart prices, and it takes serious cakeballs to stick to that pricing no matter what.
It also takes a lot of not-so-fun work like cost analysis/job costing, accounting, salesmanship, time management, and all that other stuff that sucks about running a business. It's stuff that the average person never had to deal with as an employee of someone else, and from my reading it seems like a whole lot of home bakers just haven't had business experience beyond working for an employer.

The hobbyist home baker who drastically undercharges for their cakes doesn't rely on caking as their primary -or even secondary- income. If they did, they'd be living in a van down by the river. They never bothered to take the time to do a job costing of a single cake and apply it to their product like an actual business does. They have no interest in doing any of the unfun stuff that's the backbone of running a business and, in some cases, have absolutely no clue what any of that unfun stuff actually is. It's rampant, and we all see it every single day.

The way I figure it...all you can really do in most cases is just wait it out. They'll either get over their passing cake decorating fancy, they'll eventually get sick of making $50 a week at the expensive of every moment of their free time, or some other bad business decision will send their customers running. I suppose others will crop up, but if you're doing things right, you stand a better chance at lasting them all out.

I learned the hard way.. When I first started out I had no idea how much to charge. I "thought" to get my business started I had to be super low in price. After being on CC I finally learned that it wasn't worth doing a ton of cake and being super booked without making much was the way to go. It took maybe 6 months of STRESS.. I raised my pricing and let me tell you.. the ones who had gotten cakes from me started balking at my higher prices. I have had to weed out the cheapos from the ones who really want a nice cake and expect to pay more. So, yes charge accordingly now or it will be hard to come out of that customer base you have already made.

I am a legal baker out of my home and the people in my area do not want to pay anything. They have the idea that if I can do it then they must be able to do it for a whole lot cheaper. I was asked to do a four tier wedding cake with several different gumpaste flowers cascading down the side. I explained that it would be $390 and then about died - they told me they could make the same cake for $25.00. It gets old!

PiccoloChellie I think you are exactly right. I had enough trouble deciding what I should charge and I know 3 local cake business owners that I consulted with to figure things out in the beginning plus years of Exec. Pastry experience/degree and cake boss program to cost out things... but taking a guesstimate on what that funky 3d cake you've never done before should cost is still tough for those of us with experience. Now you take a hobbyist or the new wanna-be with out experience and they've no clue at all what they are up to on the business side EVEN if they can execute the cake.

Piccolo you are in rare form and have made me laugh out loud with the brass cakeballs and living in a van comments from upthread.

No worries!!!

High five!!!

Believe me, i started out the cruddy way, Charging way less than i should have, And i learned the hard way!
i would love to be be able to say im making a mint and getting rich of making 3 cakes a month *snorts* as before, 90% of the population in my area will just not pay above the price for cake, they know they can go to asda and get a cake for less than £10 and there's no way in the world i can compete with that if i want to not live in a tent in a field some where lol! I'm just saying, Alot of it does depend on the area,and taking that into account is important.

Lots of home bakers seem to start out underpricing, but shouldn't it be the other way around? If you base your price starting out around the highest quotes for your area, you either do well and stay at those prices, or you can lower them a little at a time based on what you need to make and what your area is willing to pay. At least that way you don't have to worry about losing clients because you had to raise your rates, plus the added bonus of being able to compare the amount of orders you had at higher prices to the ones with the lower prices and being able to tell if your profit has changed. If you can do three cakes a month as opposed to 10 and make the same amount of money, maybe you were in the right place to start with.

thats just it Roccos mom, I cant just market to the other 10%, I do sell to them, And usually they are bigger cakes because the person is willing to pay it , But i cant have one price of cake for one person, and one for another just because i think they look a bit better off, The majority of cakes i do are small and mostly for things like birthdays and christenings and thats because they will look at my list, and get what they can with what they can, which usually isnt much . i don't consider myself to be cheap and im not aiming to be cheap just so i can get more customers, If that worked, we'd all be doing it!

Caths_Cakes, I see what you mean and whatever works for you.

Me, I will market to the people who can afford me. Often when pople celebrate they come up with budgets that normally do not exist--the family goes in on G'ma's 70th b-day party stuff like that--I'm there for them.

Stuff like that.

All the best to you.

I am new to this business so I have been afraid of charging too much myself. The first few cakes I did, I did it for my cost and nothing else, simply because i was happy to be getting the experience. However, a few days ago my best friend asked me to do her grandma's 75th birthday cake. She had a picture of a cake from a grad party she had attended and wanted the same thing. It was 3 tiered square, each tier 3 layers, each tier 3 different flavors, to feed 100 people. Buttercream with fondant cut-outs. She said the woman who did it for that grad party did that cake for $80, and she was looking to get it for that price as well. I gracefully declined the job. I still feel like I could have used the experience with a tiered square cake but that is charging less than $1 per person.

I think it's important to remember that people simply do not know what it takes to crank out these types of cakes. I know this, because I was one of them. I decided I could do it for family and friends and give people the benefit of high-end cakes for low-end prices. I felt all philanthropic and crap. But, let me tell you, after trying to do three cakes in one weekend (I have a full-time job and hour away from my home) I almost commited cake-icide. I cannot fault the people, though. They wanted a good deal and I was offering. Of course, then I found out that I was commiting a huge crime by even accepting the pennies that I did. I feel extremely guilty every time I think about the people in my town who have actually taken the time to train and acquire licensing.

I am now taking a hiatus from any caking, learning to actually produce some quality work, so that one day I can become licensed and offer a good product that I will feel comfortable charging fair market prices for.

You couldn't even buy the materials to bake a 4-tier cakes for $25...

PiccoloChellie I love you response!

kAnd when I was told they could do it for $25.00 I told them I really find that hard to believe but be my guest. It's really interesting the people you get to meet.

That was exactly my point. I have zero head for business. Take that back - I have zero interest in business. I am a researcher/statistician by day and the cake thing was to be my counter-balance to keep me from going insaner (not a typo - already a bit insane.)

I think that once I did one cake and heard all the "omg - you should do this for money....blah blah blah blah) I lost my head for a second. I simply do not care a bit about getting rich of cakes, even in the event that the Goddess of Cake reigned down on me and gave me magic hands.

I just got really sad when I would think of all the little girls who wished they could have a cool funky cake when they had parents who simply could never afford such a luxury.

That said, I can still "practice" on people who are grateful just to have something without causing woes to the actual cakers in my area.

Believe me, I do not even need to be told how ridiculously I thought for a few months. I do, however, always welcome honesty. If you are worth my time, you are worth my honesty.