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First wedding cake order and pricing delima :-/

post #1 of 15
2/27/12 at 8:22pm
Thread Starter 
So an old coworker asked me to do her wedding and groom cake for her in June. 3 tier (14, 12, and 8 square) separated by fill-able pillars, gum paste calla lilies, tons of edible pearls. 14 inch Grooms cake a duck pond with the bride dragging the groom away with the shotgun tucked under her arm. Oh, and she wants me to stay and cut the cake and serve. So all in all I charged about $680. Everyone is telling me this is waay too much! I live in a town of about 8,000 so not really big and the main place to buy a cake is Hays food town....So, any-who I'm just wondering what you all think? I think it's not a bad price I charged $2.50 per serving for smoothed buttercream with fondant accents and only $8.00 an hour for the cutting and serving...
Oh and BTW, the figures for the grooms cake are going to cost $60.00 by themselves icon_eek.gif
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post #2 of 15
2/27/12 at 8:36pm
There are FAR too many variables for anyone on this forum to tell you what you should charge. What are your costs? What are your recipes and ingredients and supplies? What is your skill level? Superb, acceptable, learning, poor?

I refer everyone who posts a question about pricing to this excellent article by CakeBoss:

http://www.cakeboss.com/PricingGuideline.aspx

At least you charged something half-way reasonable. Why do you care if "Everyone is telling me this is waay too much"? If she wants a custom cake, she'll pay for it. If she doesn't, she can get it from Hays Food Land. Tell everybody else (family? friends?) it is none of their business!
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post #3 of 15
2/27/12 at 9:07pm
Your prices sound cheap . Im guessing people think wow$680 she is Making that much !! Because I live in a small town also . No one adds up that it took you X amount of hours to shop,create , bake ,cleanup and how much everything related costs .
$8 an hr to cut cake . From what Ive seen its usually $25'or more with a minium 2hrs .
and a delivery fee.
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post #4 of 15
2/27/12 at 9:08pm
Your prices sound cheap . Im guessing people think wow$680 she is Making that much !! Because I live in a small town also . No one adds up that it took you X amount of hours to shop,create , bake ,cleanup and how much everything related costs .
$8 an hr to cut cake . From what Ive seen its usually $25'or more with a minium 2hrs .
and a delivery fee.
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post #5 of 15
2/27/12 at 9:14pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Apti

There are FAR too many variables for anyone on this forum to tell you what you should charge. What are your costs? What are your recipes and ingredients and supplies? What is your skill level? Superb, acceptable, learning, poor?

I refer everyone who posts a question about pricing to this excellent article by :

http://www..com/PricingGuideline.aspx

At least you charged something half-way reasonable. Why do you care if "Everyone is telling me this is waay too much"? If she wants a custom cake, she'll pay for it. If she doesn't, she can get it from Hays Food Land. Tell everybody else (family? friends?) it is none of their business!



Yes, I know that no one can tell me if I'm charging too much or too little I was just venting a little lol...and where I live I have to drive an hour or more away to the nearest cake supply store or order online for specialty supplies icon_eek.gif And the cake is going to be vanilla bean marble, and vanilla beans here are 9.15 for TWO beans icon_eek.gif and I've been doing cakes for a couple of years now, no good pictures on here because I never thought to take pictures of cakes I was giving away lol...And thanks for the link I'll check it out icon_biggrin.gif
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post #6 of 15
2/27/12 at 9:20pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cakery2012

Your prices sound cheap . Im guessing people think wow$680 she is Making that much !! Because I live in a small town also . No one adds up that it took you X amount of hours to shop,create , bake ,cleanup and how much everything related costs .
$8 an hr to cut cake . From what Ive seen its usually $25'or more with a minium 2hrs .
and a delivery fee.




And yes everyone around here thinks that anything over $30 is expensive lol....and for the cutting I'm only paying myself a little more than minimum wage here...The last cake I did someone said that $60 was crazy expensive, surely it didn't take that long to make and decorate....two tiered from scratch vanilla bean with tons of MMF decorations and pressed sugar numbers on top...I was up till 5am finishing it cause I also go to college full time, work, and have a 4 year old to take care of icon_rolleyes.gif
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post #7 of 15
2/27/12 at 9:27pm
sounds WAAAAAAYYYY too cheap. People think your expensive because they have never priced a cake anywhere else. I use the wilton serving chart so 8-12-14 would serve like 200. I charge $5 a slice... so that would be $1000 just for the wedding cake to start.... Then another 14 inch cake... serves about 100. Thats another $500. So $1500 for both. I'm actually cheap in my area because at $5 a slice I include most of the decorations unless something is completely out of the ordinary. alot of people/places charge per flower, per figure. I'm sure there are people here that would charge close to $2000.
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post #8 of 15
2/27/12 at 9:33pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by mplaidgirl2

sounds WAAAAAAYYYY too cheap. People think your expensive because they have never priced a cake anywhere else. I use the wilton serving chart so 8-12-14 would serve like 200. I charge $5 a slice... so that would be $1000 just for the wedding cake to start.... Then another 14 inch cake... serves about 100. Thats another $500. So $1500 for both. I'm actually cheap in my area because at $5 a slice I include most of the decorations unless something is completely out of the ordinary. alot of people/places charge per flower, per figure. I'm sure there are people here that would charge close to $2000.



lol wow! If I charged that much I would get nothing but crickets icon_rolleyes.gif And I used the slightly larger serving chart (people around here can eat...especially when it's free!)
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post #9 of 15
2/27/12 at 9:38pm
Simple math says it's not enough, even if we use Earlene's cake chart which gives a little more generous servings, you are serving about 255 servings x 2.50 a serving =637.50. Plus $60.00 for modeling for groom's cake plus at least 2 hours at $8.00 = $713.50. And that does not include sales tax, delivery/set up plus expense for gumpaste flowers and it looks like you are going to be needing a whole bunch of them to fill in between tiers (if I understood correctly what you are describing). So...if I was charging $2.50 a serving, my quote for what you are describing would have been more like $820 or so PLUS gumpaste flowers...and of course most cakes are delivered at least an hour or 2 before the wedding, so if you are staying the whole time it could be more like 4 to 6 hours before cake needs cutting or you are looking at having to leave and them come back again.
The above of course is based on the numbers you specified, I don't know how accurately they represent your expense/profit/experience balance and all other factors that go into establishing your prices.
You also said that it is for a friend, so it sounds like you have given her a very good discount.
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post #10 of 15
2/27/12 at 10:22pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by BarbaraM0809

Quote:
Originally Posted by mplaidgirl2

sounds WAAAAAAYYYY too cheap. People think your expensive because they have never priced a cake anywhere else. I use the wilton serving chart so 8-12-14 would serve like 200. I charge $5 a slice... so that would be $1000 just for the wedding cake to start.... Then another 14 inch cake... serves about 100. Thats another $500. So $1500 for both. I'm actually cheap in my area because at $5 a slice I include most of the decorations unless something is completely out of the ordinary. alot of people/places charge per flower, per figure. I'm sure there are people here that would charge close to $2000.



lol wow! If I charged that much I would get nothing but crickets icon_rolleyes.gif And I used the slightly larger serving chart (people around here can eat...especially when it's free!)



I'm in NYC so my prices are very different. But I know alot of people that charge $7.50 to $10 a serving here. People don't bat an eyelash. Dessert prices in restaurants are average $8-$15. (I paid $22 for dessert last week... but I rather not talk about that! lol) Thats why people don't like talking pricing on here.. every area is so different. But to me alot of you in small towns are underpricing yourself to the point where you pay yourself minimum wage or even less. Your time is valuable and quality ingredients aren't cheap!
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post #11 of 15
2/28/12 at 9:27am
BarbaraM0809~~I understand about wanting to vent on CC, nobody local has a clue what you go thru to make your cakes. You didn't say who was saying it was too expensive. Was it the bride or groom? Are either of them raising a fuss or just other people?

I understand about lower pricing in rural areas, my cousin has been selling cake for 30 years in a farming county in Kansas. The CakeBoss article mentions geography as one of the BIG factors in pricing. Pebbles1727 came up with some good numbers based on your information. CakeBoss software may be an investment you want to consider. The software would allow you to come up with exact numbers like those from Pebbles1727.

But even with rural area pricing, if somebody wants a fancy cake for a special occasion, they will either pay more than Hays Food Land, or not, depending on how bad they want it. Just because they may be rural with a lower per capita income, doesn't mean they don't have some discretionary dollars to spend for a wedding or special occasion.
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post #12 of 15
2/28/12 at 9:48am
The town I live in has 850 people. 20 miles away (where I work) is a town of 100,000. Still, the going rate in this whole area is $2.50/serving to start. Some places add for every dot of icing they put on a cake and some will include gumpaste flowers.

I say your prices are your prices and if someone doesn't want to pay them, that's fine. Then they don't get a custom designed/baked/decorated cake. But don't let the comments get you down. You earn every penny of what you charge plus some. They'll come around and if they don't, it's ok.
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post #13 of 15
2/28/12 at 10:29am
Barbara if you dont use that many vanilla beans have you thought of using vanilla paste ? Its the beans in liquid and I really like it . I ordered it off Amazon .com 2 -4oz .bottles for $22.
Some have also mentioned they buy the beans off the internet in larger quanties but much less expensive . Putting beans in a bottle of vodka for 3-6 months also makes your own extract . I havent tried that yet . I was very satisfied with the paste .
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post #14 of 15
2/28/12 at 2:21pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks everyone for all the advice! And thanks Pebbles1727 I didn't realize I had messed up the math that bad lol. I do have the cake boss software I just haven't had the time to input all the recipes and prices been really busy with school lol...And, the bride hasn't commented on the price yet so we'll see how that works out, it was just my friends saying it was expensive and I told them they were nuts lol icon_rolleyes.gif And I will definitely look into buying vanilla beans online icon_lol.gif all in all I will bite the bullet on this price and call it a learning experience and get to work setting up my cake boss software lol....
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"Oh, I offended you? Please take a number and wait in line with everyone else waiting on me to give a f*#k"
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"I smile because I have no idea what's going on..."
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post #15 of 15
2/28/12 at 7:20pm
Thanks for the feedback. Sounds like you have a working plan! Once you get your software info loaded, you'll be ready for anything.
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