I know there are a million threads asking what should be charged. I know what I would like to charge I'm just curious on the method that others use for pricing 3d cakes.

I don't really do many 3d cakes but recently it seems that is all people want. This is all new to me. I had been pricing the cakes by my fondant serving price and then adding on pricing for details (for example the cost of a sugar crown, or a fondant figure). Lately I have been thinking about just going up by a dollar on my fondant price and making that the flat rate for 3d cakes instead of doing all the add ons (unless its like a million handmade sugar flowers or something). Im not sure


So how do you price your 3d/carved/sculpted cakes?

-Base price and then add on

or

-A higher flat rate fee with no add ons.

A little of both...I charge a higher rate per serving, then add on if it is really technical. I get the serving amount by seeing the serving amount of the cakes i will use to carve, then subtracting a percentage. That is why I start with a higher serving amount. Some people charge regular serving amounts and charge for the cut off cake too. I think the most important thing is finding a method that you are happy with and sticking to it. It gets easier with practice.

I was asking in another thread about how to figure out how many servings the carved cake will feed. I wanted to know if there was a percentage to go by on carved cakes for the servings.

Are you subtracting a percentage off the price, a percentage to get the servings, or both? Do you mind me asking how do you find that percentage? Some cakes i'm lost on how to figure out the number of servings.

I find that the number of servings is the least of my worries with 3-D cakes. I don't even worry about that in terms of figuring out how much to charge. The cost is in the time that it takes.

I can do a wedding cake in a few hours, then work on the groom's cake that goes with it for 5 hours. The number of the servings in the wedding cake would probably be about 4 times the number of servings in the groom's cake, but you have to charge appropriately for your time.

For argument's sake, say that you're charging $4 a servings for the wedding cake, and it would serve 120. So that's $480 gross profit on 3 hours of hands-on work. If your overhead is about 30% (I'm just pulling mumbers out of the air for argument's sake here) then you've netted about $336 out of that.

If you charged the same $4 a serving for the groom's cake that served 30, you'd be grossing $120 for 5 hours of hands-on work. Using the same expense percentage you've now netted $84 for more time spent.


And I'm also leaving out the time spent on prep work for the two cakes, which for a 3-D cake could potentially be more than the wedding cake.

3D cakes are pretty much all I do. Here is how I price it.
Price per serving (what you think you will deliver)
1/2 base price per serving (for carve away)
Hourly rate for Structure
Hourly rate for Sculpting
Hourly rate for Painting
Hourly rate for FX (setting up Smoke, lights, and motors)

It is actually broken down on the invoice this way. This helps me track what I am making my money on.

I up charge all supplies 25% and I count everything.
Boards, motors, lights, Structure parts, everything!