Help With Cupcake And Cake Pops Pricing!

Business By MJbakes Updated 6 Jul 2012 , 6:25pm by MJbakes

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MJbakes Posted 6 Jul 2012 , 4:49pm
post #1 of 7

So a friend of a friend of mine asked me the other day how much I would charge for 3 dozen cupcakes and 2 dozen cake pops. I told her I'd get back to her cause I've never sold either before, let alone made cake pops before.

What are other people selling them for? For my cakes I charge $3/serving for BC and $4/serving for fondant...

I'd be making her just the regular size cupcakes and she wants a little fondant "accent" on them, i think the liners say medium on them.
And for the cake pops I have to start practicing cause I have no idea where to begin!

6 replies
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jason_kraft Posted 6 Jul 2012 , 4:52pm
post #2 of 7

To calculate a price you need to find out what your costs are first, including ingredients, labor, and overhead on a per-order basis (insurance, utilities, accounting, etc.).

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letsgetcaking Posted 6 Jul 2012 , 5:20pm
post #3 of 7

Jason gave you good advice on the pricing. Here's a link to a good tutorial for making cake pops:

http://decoratethis.blogspot.com/2011/02/cake-pops-tutorial.html

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MJbakes Posted 6 Jul 2012 , 5:47pm
post #4 of 7

well i know my cost of supplies. i used the cake matrix on here. to make a batch of vanilla cake batter (fills 2 inch rounds) it costs me around $3 and around $4 to make just a plain vanilla bc. so thats $7 costs. So thats roughly 3.5 cups of batter and 4 cups of icings. I get about 28 cupcakes from that recipe. So my cost of ingredients per cupcake is .25 cents? But that doesnt include liners right? It costs me 1.69 for 50 large size cupcake liners. So my liners cost me .03 cents per cupcake. So now my supply cost is .31 cents per cupcake. (plus a couple of cents for the taxes i paid on the products if any)

I'm just starting out dont have a huge list of clients just a few. is $1.50 per cupcake too much or too little. Plus .50cents for a fondant accent?

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jason_kraft Posted 6 Jul 2012 , 5:54pm
post #5 of 7
Quote:
Originally Posted by MJbakes

well i know my cost of supplies. i used the cake matrix on here. to make a batch of vanilla cake batter (fills 2 inch rounds) it costs me around $3 and around $4 to make just a plain vanilla bc. so thats $7 costs. So thats roughly 3.5 cups of batter and 4 cups of icings. I get about 28 cupcakes from that recipe. So my cost of ingredients per cupcake is .25 cents? But that doesnt include liners right? It costs me 1.69 for 50 large size cupcake liners. So my liners cost me .03 cents per cupcake. So now my supply cost is .31 cents per cupcake. (plus a couple of cents for the taxes i paid on the products if any)



That's your ingredient cost, you also need to know labor and overhead. For example if 28 cupcakes takes 3 hours including prep, baking, decorating, and cleanup, and you pay yourself $12/hour, the labor cost per cupcake is $1.28. If you have $1000/year in overhead costs and you sell 3 dozen cupcakes per week (1800/year) the overhead cost per cupcake is $0.56. (Since you also make cakes you can look at it on a per-order basis: if you have one order per week, $1000 in annual overhead allocates out to $20 per order.)

Add this to the ingredient cost (round up to $0.35 for taxes) and you have a cost of $2.19 based on the example labor and overhead costs above. Adding a 25% profit margin would get you to about $2.75/cupcake.

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MJbakes Posted 6 Jul 2012 , 6:11pm
post #6 of 7

Thanks Jason. This info is really helpful, I guess I have a lot more homework to do!

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MJbakes Posted 6 Jul 2012 , 6:25pm
post #7 of 7
Quote:
Originally Posted by letsgetcaking

Jason gave you good advice on the pricing. Here's a link to a good tutorial for making cake pops:

http://decoratethis.blogspot.com/2011/02/cake-pops-tutorial.html




and thanks for link, im going to try it out this weekend

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