Hello everyone. i am pretty new to the business. I have only done white and chocolate cakes and priced my cakes accordingly. I got a call for a spice cake for this weekend and am not sure if I should add to the price. She wants a 10" cake with cream cheese icing and it decorated too. I would normally charge for a 10" white cake iced in buttercream with all buttercream decorations $40. I know I need to charge extra, because the list of ingredients is crazy. Please let me know what you think!
Jen
A 10" round serves 38 so you are charging $1.05 per serving?
How does that even cover your costs?
First of all I would completely re-think your pricing structure and secondly yes charge more for specialty ingredients.
If you don't know if you should charge more for the flavor, do you know how much it is going to cost you to make it? Do you know how much it cost you to make your white and chocoalte? You'll need to know the difference before you can decide to charge more or the same.
I don't charge differently for "specialty flavors". I have a list of 12 flavors that i offer for the same price, I work for less per hour on my two most expensive ones, but I make more money on the white, chocolate, and yellow (and those are the ones I do the most) I prefer to have a wider variety for my customer instead of trying to nickel and dime them jsut because they want a different flavor.
Now i do have a disclaimer that if they request a flavor that ISN"T on the list then the price may go up.
My specialty flavors are cakes that I make that are from scratch such as carrot. I have those listed separately on my pricing list. My basic flavors are the ones I make starting from a box mix such as chocolate, vanilla, etc. For BC decorated only cakes I begin at $2.00 per serving for basic flavors and $2.25 per serving for specialty flavors. I do not offer cream cheese icing as option since I cannot sell anything that requires refrigeration.
My personal opinion when figuring the cost of your cake is that you should use the most expensive to base your pricing off of, just like you shouldn't base your prices off of sale prices instead of regular prices.
If you base it off the more expensive cake then when you do the less expensive you make more money on them, and when you do a more expensive one you aren't losing any money. So thing by basing your prices off the regular prices and shopping on sell. You make more money when you buy the items on sale, and you don't have to lose out on money when you can't get something on sale.
My personal opinion when figuring the cost of your cake is that you should use the most expensive to base your pricing off of, just like you shouldn't base your prices off of sale prices instead of regular prices.
If you base it off the more expensive cake then when you do the less expensive you make more money on them, and when you do a more expensive one you aren't losing any money. So thing by basing your prices off the regular prices and shopping on sell. You make more money when you buy the items on sale, and you don't have to lose out on money when you can't get something on sale.
very well put texassugar, i just want to clarify, that my two most expensive cakes that i loose a litle money on both use alcohol in them which is where the higher cost comes in. But I don't do them often enough to warrent raising my prices to reflect this, plus i'm competitive right now and still offer more flavors than other people around me.
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