Greetings Bakers!

Question for all of you who have a cake decorating business.

How much do you charge for things?

The reason I ask is because I love baking and I am fairly good at it, or so I've been told. Recently I've been "hired" by different people where I work to bake cakes/cupcakes for them for different events...promotion parties, going away celebrations, etc. I don't mind baking things for people at all, I love it. My issue is I don't know what to charge. They all just tell me to tell them what they owe me. I usually just keep track of what I spend to make the items, tell them that and then hope they give me more for my time/effort.

The last baking that I did I made an 8-in 3 layer cake w/ cream cheese frosing and fondant decoration and 72 cupcakes and was given $100 total....$60 of it covered my supplies. Too much? Too little?

Any information would be appreciated!

Sarah

Greetings luvbug and welcome to the CC. This topic has been discussed extensively. Use the search box and type in "how to price cakes" and learn for yourself how to do the math. Knowing how to price will give you confidence and it's far better than returning each time to ask the same question for a different cake.

ANot enough! Definately worth more than that!

As a fellow newbie: I find if I ask questions on here, quite often I'm directed to the search box as its been covered before, so my advice to you is, check the forum first. Usually there is plenty of info, its great!

. I'm new here too so I can't help you as much as I'd like to.

You could try using "cakeulator" an app that helps with pricing...

I'm about to ask a question about it... Wish me luck :-)

PS mimfix is right about the food and safety stuff, check with your council for sure!

i've looked in some of the forums and it seems a bit overwhelming. supposedly there is a matrix that is "stickied" but i can't find it anywhere. ha.

i agree with checking with rules...the extent of my "selling" though is to just people i work with for work related events.

thanks for both of your inputs : )

ACheck out the Starting a Business and Pricing Formula links in my signature below.

One thing that I would like to ask is if you are sure you calculated the cost of your supplies correctly. Do you know how to properly cost a recipe? You cannot just add all the receipts together. For instance- if you paid $2.00 for a dozen eggs but you only used 2 eggs for the entire recipe, then you can only add the cost of the two eggs which would be $.35. I only ask this because it seems $60 is a lot for 1 three layer cake and 72 cupcakes. I bake all my cakes and filllings from scratch and use all fresh ingredients and my cakes do not end up costing that much- even including the cost of the cake rounds and base. Just something to think about...