Cake Stall for 50,000 people! Help!

How many other food vendors will be there and what are they selling.  That will have a big impact on how much you sell.

10K is way too many! What sort of event is it? Will there be other stalls selling sweets?

20% of the guests won't buy something, if you are very lucky, 5% might, assuming on your stall placement, the uniqueness of your product and type of event.

 I don't have any advice, but please let us know how you did on this endeavor!  That's the most cupcakes I've ever hear of!    Jason gives pretty good advice, though, so you may not need as many as you are planning.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jason_kraft 

To put things into perspective, if you were able to consistently bake, decorate, and package 250 cupcakes during a single 8 hour shift, at one shift per day it would take 40 days to make 10,000 cupcakes. Even at a low-ball rate of $10/hour you are talking about $3200 in labor alone.

If you put 24 cupcakes in a half-sheet box, you will need 416+ boxes. Each half-sheet box is 19"x14"x4", which is 1064 cubic inches or .62 cubic feet. This means you will need to store about 258 cubic feet of boxes. To transport them you would need to rent a truck, a 10' U-Haul truck holds 402 cubic feet so it would be about two-thirds full. Or you could use three Toyota Highlanders with the seats folded flat.

The bigger problem would be the stall. 2m x 2m = ~42 square feet. In order to store 10,000 cupcakes in half-sheet boxes in your stall, assuming half the stall would be used for storage, you would need to stack them over 12 feet high.

This would have made a great homework assignment for my MBA operations management class.

This is fantastic! Jason, you have too much spare time on your hands!

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcaulir 

This is fantastic! Jason, you have too much spare time on your hands!

I have to say I have done the same type of math for someone else, who was wanting to bring a bunch of samples to a bridal show....

I did an event last year where 10,000 people attended, and I sold 1500 cupcakes. The event was a cakey decoratey type fair held over 2 days. There was one other person selling cupcakes who was right next to me. Another stand was selling pies and ice cream and the fourth stand was savoury stuff. I counted on 1000 cupcakes for the whole weekend and sold them all on the Saturday. Saturday night we made another 500 and sold those by 3pm on the Sunday. The girl next to me sold 1000 cupcakes over the weekend, so a total of 2500 were sold to those 10000 people.

This year I will be making 2000, as the event will be 3 days this time. Same amount of people are expected to attend and the same food vendors will be there.

I transported them on a wheeled bakers trolley with 20 racks - each rack holds 50 of my cupcakes. I prep the BC ahead of time, transported in icing bags, and decorated at the fair. Just because it is easier to transport undecorated cupcakes in these quantities.

I have some on display under cute glass cake domes so people can choose, and pack the cupcake boxes picking the decorated cupcakes from behind me. I have since done other big events and transported the naked cupcakes in plastic boxes, getting 100 in each box in 2 layers with parchment between the layers.

Good luck!!!
 

Great info, Jason. When I see a thread such as this one (if I read it and think "Whoa...") started by a very new member, I always wonder if it's a real question. However, I enjoy reading the thoughtful responses from our longtime members.