I get questions about how much soinso tiered cake is then after I give them their total they say well how much for the same thing but on a sheetcake or how much is a sheetcake.
I really dont charge enough for them , I charge a different amount than my tiered or other specialty cakes simply bc the sheetcakes at the store chains not even a mile up the street, are still cheaper but its starting to be not worth it on them, I dont make enough off of them and tired of ppl wanting everything from the tiered cake that makes it say $150 and just bc its put on a sheetcake with almost the same amount of work on the fondant pieces just less to bake they think it should be significantly less almost freakin free. Ive really been debating not doing them anymore any suggestions or advice .

start w/ a base price and add on for specialty things.

for instance, I charge $.25/serv. for fondant accents.
$.25/serv. for filling (1 layer), and $.50/serv. to cover in fondant, etc.

So if someone wants a sheet cake to serve 35 ppl. and then want fondant polka dots........they're paying $8.75 extra on top of the regular cost of the sheet cake.

If they had a tiered cake that served that many ppl. it would be the same amount added on to that cost!

It still leaves the sheet cakes cheaper, and I totally feel your pain.

Indydebi I know always charged the same for sheets and tiered cakes, cake is cake to her.......35 servings of rectangle cake 2" high is no different than 35 servings of round cake 4" high, same amount of cake, same amount of work.


I do a LOT of sheet cakes and I loathe them!! Mainly for the reasons you say.......I just don't get a lot of profit from them. However, 85% of my business is sheet cakes (just look at my photos and you'll see) I charge more than wal-mart and enough to make a "profit" just not a huge one.

However, they are a lot quicker for me to make........I don't have to torte them, I don't have to fill them (usually), I don't have to stack them (too often), etc. I also don't worry too much about corners being absolutely perfect like I would on a square tiered cake either......a high price commands a higher attention to details in my book!

I spend on average between 30 minutes to 2 hrs. on any given sheet cake (2 hr. ones are usually ones with detailed pics on them).

when I do fbct's I'm debating on charging an extra fee of like $5.00 or something for them too, because they consume more of my time.

The most recent sunset cake in my pics (I'll attach a photo) was a full sheet -2-11"x15 cakes together.........I timed myself. I put on the icing with the big wilton icing tip, and then smoothed it, and then airbrushed the sunset, messed up the waves, added palm trees, and sprinkled some brown sanding sugar for "sand" and piped the bottom border and checked the timer

14 min. 23 seconds!! I paid about $11.00 in supplies to make the cake and charged $50.00 for the cake...........so basically I made $39 profit for 15 min. of work that's $156 /hr. !! lol Good profit..........................but if I had spent 3 hrs. on that cake, that's only $13/hr. still liveable......but again this doesn't count any time spent baking the cake or cleaning up afterwards!

The important thing to remember is not to spend TOO much time on the sheetcakes, which can be hard when you're new and it takes forever to do everything.

I can ice and smooth a full sheet cake in about 3 minutes.........I used to spend literally an hour or more for this step! So you get faster as you get comfortable.

Ive been doing cakes for about 10years now, so I pop them out pretty fast, its just frustrating when ppl think that just bc its a sheetcake they can get all the bells and whistles and it still be under the stores prices..

I buy my icing premade so I don't have that time invested in making/cleaning up after that fiasco LOL.

I would say it took me about 2 hrs. total from beginning to end of process (including baking, decorating, and cleanup...........not counting cooling time though (since that doesn't require me even being there).


So even then, it's decent profit.........but GENERALLY I spend hrs. just decorating, even with sheetcakes!


I think whether or not you do sheetcakes usually depends on whether or not you HAVE to do sheetcakes!!

I'm getting more and more tiered cake orders and wedding cake orders, so I'm going to raise prices on my sheetcakes and hope they eventually fizzle out and become a rarity in my business!