Hi, I've done cakes for family and friends for a few years but now I have a co-worker that would like me to make a tray of about 5 dozen christmas cookies. (2-doz decorated sugar cookies, 1-doz monster cookies, 1-doz snowballs, and 1-doz thumpprints).

Please help me determine how to price these?

TIA
Nikki

Are these cookies that you plan on making or you'd be making them just for her. I have a 2 lb. minimum. I charge $8.95 - $9.95 / lb. My wedding cookies are small 1 or 2 bites. Thumbprints, snowballs? (are these like mexican wedding cakes?) . I even give them small cut outs so they get more. I had 1 lady come to me with a list of: 1 lb this, 2 lbs that, etc. I told her that I don't do any orders under 2 lbs. as that is as far as I can cut my recipes. Not really, but it saves me alot of grief & time. HTH

$1 per inch for decorated sugar/gingerbread cookies.
25-50 cents each for drop/rolled cookies, depending on cost of ingredients (i.e. cookies with nuts or dried fruits in them are more expensive than regular oatmeal or chocoalte chip cookies).

Don't forget to include the cost of the tray or basket, the cello, and the bow (if you use a bow), plus a surcharge for the gas/time of shopping for these, about 10-20%.

So, for example, if you did a tray with 100 cookies, 20 each of 5 kinds:
20 decorated sugar cookies - $20
20 decorated gingerbread cookies - $20
20 snowballs/wedding cookies - $10
20 chocolate chip cookies with nuts - $10
20 jam thumbprint cookies - $5
tray, cello, and bow - $7 + 20% -- $8.40
total: $73.40
Round up to pad for incidentals - $75
So you'd charge $75 for the tray

I don't charge by lb, I generally charge by the serving (3 cookies per serving.) For a small tray (10-15 people/45 cookies) I charge $25, medium (25-30/90 cookies) $50, and for a large tray (50-60 people/180 cookies) $100. It ends up working out to 55 cents/cookie. I don't "cut a deal" as the trays get larger...it's a lot of work to bake that much, and usually the actual trays you are plating them on are more expensive. For decorated cookies that aren't bagged/bowed I charge $15/doz. If I were to make monster cookies, I would probably use at least twice the regular amount of dough, so I'd charge $1.10/cookie...so $30 for the decorated, $13.20 for the monster cookies, $6.60 for the snowballs, and $6.60 for the thumbprints...total $56.40....I'd probably go down a little and charge $55. Unless I was having a bad day and then maybe I'd charge $60. =)

HTH and I wasn't toooo confusing!!! LOL!

Iggy - the monster cookies were probably the only ones that I hadn't thought of making myself. (I make cookie/candy boxes for my co-workers for their xmas gift.) The rest had crossed my mind and I figured the extras could be thrown into these or sent to work with my hubby.

Thanks, all of you for the info. Your pricing was on the same line as I was thinking myself but just wasn't confidnent in it.