So, I think we all know that in this business, speed is king. I don't have a lot to compare to, so I wanted your thoughts on how long it would take you, total hours, to complete these 2 cakes. (or something similar, I know we don't all use the same types of buttercream, same recipes, etc.)

1 yellow cake, from scratch, 10 in round and 8 in round
1 red velvet cake, from scratch, 10 in round and 8 in round
4x recipe of italian meringue buttercream, half vanilla, half chocolate (to help quantify, my 4X recipe called for a total of 8lbs of butter)
Each tier has layers of cake, 2 layers of BC filling, covered in BC
One cake is covered in buttercream with mostly basic piping decorations
One cake is coverd in fondant (store bought), with what I would consider relatively basic, simple decorations in fondant.

I know this is kind of a generic description, but I'm just looking for ballpark times on how long you all think it should require to make these types of cakes.

Thank you in advance!!!
Tim

for me, I'd be looking at around 10 hrs. at least to make, bake, and decorate. this does not include prep (shopping for ingredients, letting them come to room temp.,, etc.) , allowing cakes to cool before decorating,or cleaning up afterwards.

Just actual time spent mixing, baking, and decorating

Tim, you can figure the basic baking time. I usually factor in about 20-30 mins for the gathering, mixing, and preping pans. I've only made that icing once, for me it took a while so I don't know how to factor that one.

When I am figuring icing and decorating time, I usually figure an hour for every 30 mins I think. Because it never fails some things always take me twice as long as I think they should in theory.

The best thing to do would be to time yourself giong through the process sometime.

Thanks for the feedback. It took me about 8-9 hours to do all of that. As I thought about it later, that seemed like a long time, too long. I'm not sure 4.5 hours per cake can really be profitable. Sorry I didn't post my time in the original post, but I didn't want to influence anybody's answer.

Anyone else have additional thoughts?
Thanks!