I am a little bit confused if I charge the number of servings needed or the number of servings the pan feeds?? Example...someone needs a cake for 25 people and the pan (cake) feeds 30. Do I charge them for 25 or the 30. Hope this makes sense

you charge them for the amount of servings in the cake. so in your example, you would charge for the 30 servings.

You charge for the number of servings the cake makes. If the pan makes 30, that's what you use to calculate the cost. The customer has to decide the closest amount they want to pay for. Why would you give cake away for free? If they take it home, it's going to get eaten. They have to pay for the whole thing.

Oh, yes, it makes sense. And you should charge according to how many servings the pan makes.

Let me give you a better example.

Let's say that someone orders a 3-D car cake for 60 people, from me. It takes 2 half-sheet pans to make the cake, but much of it is carved away, leaving 60 servings. I made enough cake for 108 people, and therefore, I should be charging for 108 servings, not the 60 they ordered. Otherwise I am not only losing the overhead cost of those other 48 servings, I am also losing the profit from them.

Theresa

Hold on while I channel indydebi:

If a bucket of chicken has 12 pieces and only 10 are needed, you still pay for the 12 you get even if you throw the other 2 away.

Thanks everyone

not sure i agree 100% with the fried chicken analogy...when i order the 12 piece bucket, i get 12 pieces of pristine chicken, ready to eat, and it's my choice to "throw" the other two away. however, when i carve cake to make a design, i'm left with a bunch of ugly, crumbling pieces of cake in a stuffed ziploc bag that i'm probably not going to give to the client...alot of times, i end up selling them as cake balls, if around the holidays, and making a profit, or using it in my next batch of buttercream for spackling...

in order for that analogy of chicken to work, you have to be willing to have that bag of cake scraps ready to pass over to the client.

however, for a carved cake, i charge more per slice for the difficulty factor, $150 minimum, so when you break it down and equate it to the regular pricing, it may figure out to charging for the correct amount of servings.

The analogy I use is...if you buy a gallon of milk from me, which contains a set number of 8oz servings. I don't care how many people drink out of it, or how big the glasses are, I'm still gonna charge you for a gallon of milk. You can take one sip and pour the rest over your husbands head if you want, that doesn't change it from a gallon of milk to two servings.

Now I can tell you how many 8oz servings it contains, so you can use that as a guide to help you know how many gallons of milk to buy for your party. But you're still buying gallons of milk.

As everyone else said, you charge for how many the cake makes. You're cheating yourself out of money if you only charge how much they need!