Hello,

May be a silly question,

As my profile says I live in a small town and not much $$$ to go around sometimes. I try to help with the cost so ask them if they supply the ingredients I will give them a cheap price. Some people can more than afford it but they don't but they want to pay what the less fortunate ones. 

What should I do when they balk? Ever one knows  everything here in 5 minutes.

If you are a business, you need to charge everyone the same price.  You might be able to offer some sort of coupon or special promotion, but if you don't have consisitent pricing people will go elsewhere.

AWhat kind of prices are you charging? And how would the customer supplying ingredients make the total cost of the cake cheaper for them? If they give you $15 worth of ingredients and you reduce the price of the cake by $15 to compensate, they still would be spending exactly the same amount of money.

AI agree with Jason. The ingredients are the "cheap" part of the cake. They are still paying for the ingredients, maybe even more than what I am paying by buying in bulk. It's the decorating time/labor that really drive my prices.

AYeah, not sure I'm following this logic. $15 spent by her or you, same price at the end? You haven't already come to the conclusion with your previous orders, most of the cost is your time?

ACadillac dealerships don't set up shop where people want to spend Kia money, so if your area can't support a custom decorator, maybe they can just get cakes from Walmart. That's generally what people do when they aren't in a position to buy pricy cakes. I would be doing the same if I wasn't a decorator.

Hello,

Thank you for the input. I just do the occasional cakes here and I didn't think that it would be the same when I ask for some of the items I need.

This one I asked for the ingredients : cake mix's ( which I tweak to with my own supplies I have in the house to make it a richer cake , unless they want scratch, which I ask for the butter....butter is about $5 here) I also asked for eggs and icing ingredients unless I have enough. I gave the fondant for free( it's 100 miles to any real store here. Our 3 stores in a radiance of 25 miles, are about the size of a good 7-11 and so you are very limited as to what you can get. Other wise it's the 100 mile treck which I had made and bought fondant and the other ingredients I use to tweak my cakes.

I see you are right, I asked $30 for making the cake and supplying my own  items that I  need other than that. I don't charge for my time and all.... but I guess I was. So I won't charge her anything.

I do murals here and ask for the paint and then real cheap for the work and painting it, unless it's allot of gas if it's not here in town, then I charge for gas. Last one was 20 feet by 9 feet. Paint was 200. So include the paint into the price?

Thank you again for this wake up call.

P.S I didn't charge for the mural..it was for a friend. But I did do a door and asked only for the gas and charged 100 for it. I need help on what to charge for things like that. Any advice ? I know that murals have nothing to do with cakes but I feel that I am doing the same for the murals as I do for the cakes. Thank you again.

AThe same formula can be applied to just about any product or service: ingredients + labor + allocated overhead + profit. For example, if it takes you 8 hours to paint a mural, your wage is $10/hour, and the paint is $200, your cost would be $280, and adding a 20% markup would bring the price to $340. Click the Pricing Formula link in my signature below for more info.

If you are donating your products that's a different story, but if you want to make money you need to charge for your time. However it is possible that your local market won't be able to support a custom cake business, so if profit is your primary goal you may want to focus on selling other products/services.

Thank you Jason_Kraft,

I read your link for pricing.. very informative. No , money isn't my goal. I've really thought about this and I figured that why I ask for some items for the cakes IS to keep my supply up, from what I would use for making the cake. I do make allot of cakes, food for free unless I need something that I can't afford. Example: I made about 70 Kraught burgers for someone and only asked for certain items to make them.

I feel so bad, Felling Like I wasn't fair to some people . My Mom told me one day that when I do things for free that it is a form of tithing ( I'm a conglomeration of beliefs : Druid,Wicca and Buddhist but tithing is tithing non the less)

I will keep reminding myself of that.

Thank you again.

P.S. I will use your pricing formula for Murals. Again, thank you so much for the information and input .