I had a customer wanting a quote for a cake for her daughter in laws 40th birthday cake.  The D-I-L (this abbreviation satisfies my need to be a bit agro about the said D-I-L) gave her a photo of the cake she wanted, I don't have it to show you but this is what she wanted.  3 tier mud, ganache, covered in fondant 10", 8", 6" for 40 people.  Told the customer this was bigger than they needed and they would either have to pay for the extra slices or reduce the size of the cake.  The customer was a lovely lady and very realistic and said she thought it was too big, but it was what she wanted.

Colour theme was red and black, the bottom tier was covered in black fondant, quilted with diamontes at each join.  Middle tier was covered in red fondant with black fondant stripes.  Top tier was black fondant rolled on an embossing mat to give a floral pattern, with one handmade giant gumpaste peony on the top, and I do mean giant it was very dramatic.  The join between the bottom tier and the board was covered in white fondant balls.  The joins between the second and third tiers were covered in small plunger cutter flowers.

Ok, got all that?  I quoted $12.00 per slice, the customer said she would have to go back and see what DIL wanted to do. She rang me today to apologise for wasting my time but the DIL had found somebody on facebook to do it for - get ready for it - $140.00. Really people, really! I see this all the time, but this one was just ridiculous that works out to be $1.94 per slice.  So whoever has this order have fun losing a bucket load of money, it also crossed my mind that if they don't know how to quote it would be interesting to see how the cake turned out, as this was definitely not a beginners cake.

ASend the DIL a courtesy box of tissues with your logo on- she's gonna need em when she picks that cake up!

AWho wants to do all that work for no profit. I can not believe people who are in "business" don't know the value of their time. All it takes is a little research to figure it all out. I have learned all about pricing from CC, how does this person think this is going to turn out well. I'm not even in business yet; I know things like this are going to bother me a lot.

ABeen there and I feel your pain. What really bugs me about these people is they do wind up realizing they need to charge more, so they raise their prices and then brag about how they wised up and now charge twice as much which is still selling cake at half price.

had to find a pic of the cake. I'd love to see the $140 one lol.

That is a beautiful cake but way of the mark at $140, I'd also love to see it!

That cake is gorgeous! For $140??? Her cake won't look like that.

Just keep logging into Cake Wrecks.  It will soon appear.  :-)

AYou know...we all say it won't look like that. But ive seen people FLAWLESSLY execute designs and still under charge.

i still can't get over someone telling their Mother-in-law this is the cake I want for my 40th bday?  I couldn't even do it with my own mom or anyone else for that matter. but that's just me I guess.   Now if it was my husband and he wanted to by me a dress, that's a different matter. ;)

A

AIs that the cake then? I see it's uploaded by someone other than the OP. ust wondering if it's actually the cake.

AOh it must be, sounds spot on from the OP description.

I don't know why you're all being so mean about this. The person who's charging $140 will be making at least $3 an hour after expenses. That's more money than she started out with, so she's making a good profit!

Wow, well done, I didn't think to google the photo, that is it spot on.  And yes if they did do this cake perfectly for $140.00 it would piss me off more than seeing it on Cake Wrecks.  Just before I came on here I was doing the staff wages for the week and if you had to turn over enough to pay yourself and seven other people, and this was the only income you and the staff live on, this kind of thing bites even more. Sorry I'll stop ranting now.