Hi all
I am absolutely addicted to making cakes - just love all the crativity that goes with it, which in turn makes me a sucker for pricing.
I am wondering if someone has a system that i can use to price cakes accordingly. Such as do you charge a standard rate for a particular size, BC or fondant? then what do you charge for decorations, and finally what about time? do you all charge for your time? I ask this only because i am not really fast and all my cakes so far are quite different, so they each take their own amount of time. I've worked out my ingredients, and they are quite uniform and reasonable, but i'm just not sure how to incorporate my time and decorations into the equation. For instance my pink cake in my pictures took me about 6 hours all up from start to finish. so i don't feel i can very well charge for all that time, i am in fact selling to a shop and they are selling on. My yellow cake took longer as i had to make figurines but it;s a very simple cake. So my dillema is if i was to charge say 100.00 for that cake could they reasonably sell that on for a decent profit. i know it's not my problem what they want to sell it for but i don't want to do myself out of work because they have to sell it on for too much.
i hope what i've written makes sense, sorry it's so long...Can anyone enlighten me - please!

I know I saw I guide on one of these forums. Try the cake business one. I usually add up all my ingredients and multiply that by 3 or 4. I usually get the money for the cake, but a portion towards my bills because I bake from home. Another potion I put back into the business and then the last is my profit for me. I hope that makes sense. So If I spend 20 on ingredients I charge 60 or 80 depending on how much time it takes me to finish the cake. Also don't forget to add a little for the ingredients you already have on hand. Sometimes I forget that and only charge what I have to buy for that cake then I end up using all my supply and not replacing it. I hope this helps. Im not a professional or anything.

Hi Karema
Thanks for the reply, i've had a look at the template, i didn't know it was there. I am truely grateful for your advise and the time you took to reply, what you do is kinda how i do it but i'm also short changing myself with what i already have in cupboard too! I was hoping for all the "experts" out there - i don't know what it is but my posts just don't attract people for help. I think the cupcake debate is taking up everyones time!

I don't sell cakes but I have often wondered how I would charge if I ever did sell them which I'm not because I live in a tiny rural city in KY w/ farmers & tobacco growers.

Anyway good luck I'm sure you'll get lots of info from the other members here.

Sometimes people don't jump on to a thread because it has been discussed over and over...like pricing or scratch vs mix, etc. I put in "how much do you charge" into the search and came up with several articles that might help so you may want to go that route. If that doesn't answer your questions, then maybe ask for a specific project. Pricing depends on level of skill (you have nice photos), market, home vs. shop baker, etc. There's Alice's pricing matrix out there too that can help.

Good luck!
Paula

hi guy's
thanks for your replies, sorry if i repeated a topic that's already been raised. i'll keep looking for my answers thanks anyway

You already got some good answers and really close to what I was going to say.

But As to why you might not be getting a lot of responses is also you have one long paragraph.

If you add in a couple of line breaks it makes your post a lot easier to read and to follow along with. I know I opened this a few times and started to read and then closed it b/c it was to hard to read.... but had a chance to come back to it tonight and spend some time reading through it.