Thinking about higher prices...

I wasn't aware that you could bake from home anywhere in CA. It would be important for you to contact your local health dept and arrange for a commercial kitchen rental. I may be wrong, but I haven't seen any baker in CA able to bake from home.

Cupncake1, you do really nice work (seriously, I will be borrowing from your jungle cake a lot next weekend, it was in my favs as soon as you posted it) so it actually makes me sad to realize you might not be doing it legally in California. I don't want to assume, but your post leads us to assume that.

So, my advice to you is to become a legitimate business and get commercial kitchen space to bake out of ASAP. Once you do that, you would easily be able to charge nicely for your skill level, making it much more rewarding personally and financially. The bonus is all those people that have been buying your cakes super cheep-o will will totally understand your dramatic (and it should be dramatic) hike in prices because they will understand that you are legit. No other explanation will be necessary.

Yeah, just double-checked your pics - really nice work, you have a lot of talent!

I think she's well aware of the fact that it"s not legal in California. I hate when people get on here and post comments that have nothing to do with the question. If you're legal that's great but a lot of us start off baking from home this way and your price have nothing to do with where you bake. It's the quality of the work. cupncake1 you should charge more you might lose some customers but most people won't care cause they know how great your cakes are

You definitely need to make sure you are adequately compensated for your time. When you price a cake you should be able to put together a rough estimate of how long it will take you to bake and decorate (including cleanup time). If you're unsure, err on the side of a higher estimate.

For example, if you think a 30-serving cake will take 11 hours just to decorate, you'll probably want to charge more like $6-7/serving...unfortunately running a legal baking business is expensive in CA so you need to make sure you cover your costs.

Your cakes look great and you have a lot of talent! One thing to watch out for is copyright infringement, unless you are just using a licensed cake topper you will need written permission from the copyright owner if you want to legally sell a cake with someone else's character on it.

I think you do great work! And I agree, why does everyone jump down your throat. I thought this web page was for anyone who like to do cakes. I am a hobby baker and legal to do so in my home in Iowa. I make cakes for friends and family and people at church and work. I love to decorate and learn new things. I know so much time goes into some cakes and big box stores would never do them because they would not make enough money off them. Keep up the good work, you are amazing!

To be fair, when you talk about pricing your cost structure is integral to the discussion, including overhead costs (which can be high in states without cottage food laws).

I don't agree with assuming someone is operating illegally (unless they specifically say so) but it is important information to have to help determine how much to charge for their products.

OK first? This ALWAYS has been a hot topic - for years. If you post asking for business advice on CC then you are going to get business advice. I hope this isn't one of those threads though where the OP is going to get all butt-sore because she doesn't like the advice she is going to get, no matter how relevant or good it is.

Business 101: Pricing is based on ingredients, time, and overhead. You clearly are only covering your ingredients, not paying yourself at all, and clearly not paying any overhead. I hope you start thinking like a business person instead of thinking like a home baker that is failing at business!

No way could I be working at a legal rental kitchen for 11 hours making a cake that I'm selling for only $75. That's $140 in rental fees alone for me. I'm simply using business logic. If I knew a cake that was going to cost me $140 just in rental fees to make then I wouldn't be wasting time posting on an internet forum on "how to charge more". I'd be charging more. So I'm sorry, but no way in any part of California could you only be charging $2.50 per serving for cake (using Earlene so you are giving a ton of cake away for free) and actually cover your overhead unless you are working out of your house. Illegally.

So I actually though I gave you good advice on how to fix that? When you become legal, you can actually charge what you are worth and not what you think your grandma will pay you. And we ALL gave you the complement that you do fantastic work so you should have no problems making that transition. The reality is you will loose all those customers you think you have now (that you are allowing to completely take advantage of you) and you will trade them in for a whole new customer base that will pay you what you are worth.

Now, if you happen to have some fantastic arrangement working out of a commercial kitchen for free or something (which again, by my math you would have to be doing), then I apologize, but then again, I think you would have posted that info instead of gotten all up-in-arms about us asking about the legal aspect.

It's certainly possible to legally run a home bakery in CA, as long as you bring your home kitchen up to code or build a secondary kitchen on your property.

I agree that it's pretty much impossible to sustain a legal business in CA at the $2.50/serving price point, in almost all cases you would either have a significant initial capital investment to recoup or ongoing rent (or both).

Why is this a hard concept for people to understand? If you want to actually make money doing this and not pay other people to eat your cake while you loose precious time from your family, then you need to learn teh maths. Do you live in a cardboard box on the street rent free! , bake with a solar powered easy bake oven and work for free? If not, where you bake and how much it costs you matters in your pricing.

What? No it's NOT legal to do either. There is no cottage law here and frankly I am completely amused that YOU, Mister California Legal Police hisownself, has chosen to take an opposite viewpoint from practically EVERY POST you have ever done just to be cute and argue.

Must be a slow day for the computer programmer so he has decided to annoy the REAL cake artists again.

Sure it is, as long as you can pass inspection (and are compliant with local zoning). It's not easy though, the kitchen must be segregated from the living areas of the house if it is not a separate building on the property.

http://www.ehow.com/list_6718156_codes-home-baking-business-california.html

Really? E-how? That's where you are getting your info now? Cute. I expected a much better irrelevant link from you, but this one? Man, that's awesome. Do you do all your term papers crediting Wikipedia too?



OK, done with this thread.