Hey all, im relatively new to this, so far all my cakes have been freebees....they've been for friends, now ive got a few paying jobs lined up and i dont really know what or how to charge? Is there a basic rule of thumb, or do i have to say exactly whats involved to get an idea.

I thought it would go something like, take what you spent on mateirals and then just add 50%, am i on the right track?

Please help, i have to get back to her before she thinks im blowing her off.

thank you!

Figure out how much it costs you to do the cake. You have to include everything in this, even the small little things.

Figure about how long it will take you to do the cake. How much do you want to make an hour? Multiply those two numbers together for your labor costs.

How much profit do you want to make on the cake?

Add those three numbers together, divide by the number of servings in the cake, and you have a price per serving. You don't have to do this for every cake. Once you get your price for serving amount, then you just use that on future orders, unless they are asking for something carved/3d or gumpaste flowers, or something that will just take a ton of extra time to do.

Hi -

There's a thread about pricing in the "Cake Decorating Business" forum and someone provided a pricing matrix
http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-5711.html

Your cake $$ will be dependent on how time consuming some of your design elements are e.g. the addition of gumpaste flowers, how difficult they are to make, etc. You'll also need to figure out what percentage of return you want. 50% over ingredient costs isn't very much because it is not adequately reflecting the amount of time that goes into making cakes, especially wedding cakes. The spreadsheet will help you identify all of your costs. You don't want to price yourself too low because people associate low cost with poor quality and as you improve and want to put your prices up, you can't dramatically increase them all at once either.

Delivery has to be factored in as well....if you deliver it you take a huge risk that something will happen to the cake and you'll have to bear the loss. How far you've got to deliver it as well adds to the cost of the cake.

Hope this helps,

Thanx so much for the advice guys, it was very helpful!!!!

I have been to that thread several times and have tried to open the matrix. It will not allow me to open it. I would love to see it. I have read several comments about how helpful it is, and I need all the help I can get. LOL
So if anyone can tell me where or how I can get a copy of this, I would really appreciate it. TIA

Hi I am looking for this pricing matrix that everyone is in love with and cant find the link on where to download it for myself. If someone could please email me the link or the matrix itself I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks a ton and heres my email. [email protected]