Hi there fellow cakers!
Still being new to the 'biz' of cakes, I have someone interested in a carved firetruck cake to serve around 15 people and she wants it covered in fondant. Any best advice on what to charge for this? So far I know I haven't really been charging industry average prices for cakes but I'm still new and trying to build up some clientele. My location is up in Whitby, Ontario - Canada!
Thanks for all the tips in advance,
Nicole

Don't bother doing 3-D cakes based on serving count. Start with a minimum price and go up from there. The cost of these cakes is mostly from the work you put into designing and creating it, not from the serving amount.

I start at $150 base price for 3-D cakes, and that's for about 20-24 servings. If they want more servings than that I'll just estimate how much time it's going to add and base the price on the time involved. If they want fewer servings, too bad, that size is the one that makes sense to me. Anything smaller is so little it's kind of silly.

Most 3-D cakes take a long time to do if you put any amount of detail into them, so don't undercharge for them.

Thanks for the great tip - I definitely would have first thought serving size to calculate the price. $150 sounds like a good starting point and that would probably cover for this type of cake.
Cheers,
Nicole

I don't sell my cakes, but I'm always curious what they would cost if I did. I've never been able to figure out how you'd charge for sculpted cakes. Having a base price makes sense. I just did a fire truck cake for yesterday for the 4 year old son of a co-worker. That baby was huge! It was 2, 16 inch squares, cut in half and stacked. The fire truck was over 9 inches tall and 16 inches long! I used most of a 5 pound bucket of red Satin Ice.


Jodie

Costume czar is right....start at about $150.00.I have done two 3D Firetruck cakes and they are a tremendous amount of work and detail...Make sure you charge for everything!!

Just curious Kiddiecakes...what would you have charged for the one I made? It's 4 layers of cake, 16 inches long, 9 inches high.

Jodie

I have a firetruck 3D cake in my photos here on CC I would have sold it for $250 it served apx. 24. But it was for one of my former dance students, so I gave the grooms cake to her.

Well I provided a price of $150.00 and gave the option of going with a 8" cake designed for a substantially lower price and so far I've had no response. I've given the customer until end of day today to make a decision so that if she does go the 3D cake way, it'll give me enough time to make it by Saturday.
I'll keep you posted...

Jodie F...I charged $250.00 as it fed 40

Kiddiecakes...wow...thanks for the reply. This would would have served 112 if you go by Earlines chart, minus the cut out section. Crazy!

Jodie

I charged 120 but mine wasn't all fondant, just the details and it was my first 3D cake!

AI recently made one to serve approximately 200 people. Becaude it was for a 100th Anniversary of our local fire house, I charged them for supplies, plus the cost of our tickets to attend the party. The cake took me 22 hours to create. Supplies/Ingdients/overhead alone were in upwards of $150. I got $200. Charge for a normal customer based on my labor rate.... would have been over $800, and I made sure to let the attendees know my REAL price.