Up until now, I have pretty much made cakes for family and friends and just charged for supplies. I am now getting more and more requests for cakes and am trying to set my prices per serving.

I am curious what other Texas bakers are charging per serving, for buttercream vs. fondant. I welcome others from other states to give me feedback as well. I live in a smaller town where there are no large chain stores with bakeries for competition....although there is a small bakery in town, but they don't offer fondant covered cakes

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Kim

The only issue with that is that many different things factor in to pricing, your location, what you bake (scratch vs cake mixes), your ingredient costs (premium ingredients or not, buying in bulk or not), your overhead, your experince...

The best thing to do is figure out what a cake costs YOU to make, how much your time is worth to you and how much profit you would like to make on it.

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-694973-pricing.html

Caker A could be baking from a non doctored cake mix, use buttercream under fondant, make their own fondant and charge XYZ for an 8in cake.

Caker B could be baking from scratch with premium ingredients, use ganache under fondant, and buy a name brand fondant and charge ABC for an 8in cake.

Caker C could be baking from a doctored cake mix, use ganache under their fondant, make their own fondant and charge LMN for an 8in cake.

So while three cakers are all making the same size cake, their ingredient costs will be varied, and that doesn't even take in account that Caker A may be from a state/town where cost of living is more expensive so she/he pays more for their ingredients. And maybe Caker C buys in bulk so they can actually cut down on their ingredient costs some.

Maybe Caker A is able to bake out of their home with less of an over head cost, while Caker C has to rent a kitchen to bake from and Caker B has their own store front.

While it would be nice to get an idea of what people charged for a cake, you can't solely base your pricing system off of others. And please note, grocery stores are not your competition.

(The above is a cut and paste from a previous post of mine.)

Another thing to consider, is that we see people all the time on here discussing serving sizes. If you use the general term with out measurements, one person could be saying the charge $3 a serving for one size, while another person could be charging $3 a serving for a different size.

With all that said, because the cakes I have been doing have gotten bigger and there for take up more of my free time (which is already limited) I've decided if I do any cakes (hobby baker for family and friends) they are going to be worth my time.

I base all my servings off the Wilton Wedding servings charge, so they are a 1x2x4 inches. The last cakes I have done have been at $3 for butter cream and $4 for fondant.

And you know now that you can be a legal home baker in Texas starting Sept 1?

My base price is 2 per serving for cake with BC and simple decoration and goes up from there. Fondant-extra, flowers-extra, special fillings and icings-extra, special cake flavors-extra.

My carved cakes have a base price of 100 and quickly go up from there.

I am in Plano and bake from home, so my overhead is pretty much nonexistent. I am just paying for supplies and my labor, so that is why I charge less.


HTH
Stephanie

Tiered Stacked Cakes START at $4.00 per serving, however my average is $6.00 per serving.
TT cakes START at $5.00 per serving, once again they average about $7.00 per serving.
3-D cakes START at $150 and are priced individually , the last 3 I did where in the $400's though.
When you break it down they are about $10 per serving.

The starting price is for simple bare bones designs and people rarely want that, so that is why although my prices start low that isn't necessarily what I end up charging.