I recently raised my prices, me and my Husband both do cakes and sometimes details will take us all night so we decided to charge per slice

BC- $2

FONDANT- $3

CARVED-$4

What do you think? Ive had two people go off to someone else that I know of. I feel like I should lower them? I work out of my house!

Please use the search feature to read pricing threads. This has been addressed often and there is TONS of good info on how to price your product.

Ive searched other threads, not what I was looking for. Thanks, looking for someone to answer my question!

AToo cheap. Raise 'em higher.

AHow do you expect a realistic answer to that? We don't know what your costs are. We don't know how much you need to clear to make a profit. So the answers given previously are pretty much all anyone can tell you.

Yes there are many helpful pricing threads here. Pricing is a difficult question to answer in a forum setting. Your costs, hourly rate, and location are all factors. You need to calculate those expenses and research the competition in your area to determine how much you should charge. However if cake details are taking "all night" then your prices are barely a living wage.

Best of luck.
 

AThere is no single answer, your prices should cover the cost of your supplies, overhead and labor, while staying in line with your local market.

You may find that by paying both yourself and your husband at minimum wage (although really, who goes into business to earn minimum wage?), you can't charge a price that is in line with what your local market will bear, especially if you're staying up all night. I bet if you worked out what you really earned on those all nighter cakes you'd feel like fools for wasting your time for pennies.

Your issue is probably marketing, if you are attracting the kind of customer that is price driven you will never make money. You need to target people who value a custom cake, and are willing to pay what it's worth. If those people aren't in your local area then the cake business isn't going to work out too well for you.

Here are two good articles on pricing cakes:

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

http://jasonkraftblog.wordpress.com/2013/05/14/the-magic-pricing-formula/

Those prices look too cheap to me! DIRT CHEAP! I assume it is your clients, not you. 

Your prices are about right.....   (does that make you feel better or worse?) 

Do you just want to be BUSY?   and not care if you are losing money or working for nothing....JUST to say you have an order?

Can't tell you how much to charge ...BUT - I can tell you ... top end cake designers (ie the ones that ARE getting paid what they are worth)
 

• Almost ALWAYS cover their board
• Make sure that they are NOT selling until they have a product that is WORTHY of selling
• Spend a lot of time CALCULATING how much to sell their cakes for (they NEVER come on here asking some stranger to tell them what to charge)
• Never accept that mediocre is something to settle for
  
  
  ONE thing I think has to be stressed OVER and OVER again with people new to decorating.

It is OK to be keen and enthusiastic and excited about being asked to make a cake for somebody - but remember this....

Youir SKILL level should determine what orders you accept - NOT your prices !!

A^^ That to me, is key. When I first started I would not, under any circumstances take a cake I had little/no experience doing. My brand is worth more to me. I've been doing this a little more than a 1.5 yrs and I STILL turn down orders I don't think I can do well.

It comes to down to your costs (all costs) and skill. I can't charge the same as Dreme on CC because her sugar cookies look like they could be on display at an art exhibit but I can charge way more than Giant Eagle (grocery store in my area) for their smiley face sugar cookies.

My BC cakes start at $4 and fondant starts at $4.50. My location, skill and costs dictate those prices.

In my opinion, the prices you listed would not be enough for most people to make a living in most places and are therefore too low. The cost of living varies across the country, but there's a limit to how low it ultimately can be. And who says cake professionals should make less than everyone else? 

Why charge as much as bakeries and cake professionals? Because if you don't, you're undercutting.  And besides, who in their right mind doesn't want to sell his/her product for as much as they can?

If your cakes are low quality, then you would have to charge less as quality affects the price.

And as for your carved price-- there's no reason to give a price per serving for a carved cake. You might use it as part of how you privately work up a final quote, but it's not useful  to help customers predict a price. Let's say you're making a 20 serving, 3d pug dog cake - are you going to sell that for $4x20= $80? Let's hope not.

Having people walk away because of your prices may be of no relevance at all. Not everyone can afford fancy cake, although most seem to feel entitled to it. They may find  cheap cake lady who will do it for less. No one can compete with the cheap cake lady's prices,  except other cheap cake ladies.  Sometimes making cakes isn't a viable business. If all you have in your town is cheap cake ladies, then going into the cake business would probably be unwise.