Hi everyone,

I've read through a few posts and haven't seen any advice on pricing UNdecorated cookies and I have a question.

Someone has approached me with the opportunity of doing cookies for a Easter celebration in my community. They are having several activites for the children and want one to be decorate your own cookie.

I'm not sure how much to charge. She said it would be a large amount of cookies, amount to be further discussed, and probably just bunny shaped.

Any advice on how much to charge? I was thinking .35 or .50 a cookie. Also, I was going to suggest that I ice the cookies white and let them just color with edible markers, then for sure I would go $0.50. She made it sound like a big day long event, this would be their first and then they want it to be annual so I figure it would be a good opportunity. I hate to think tons of kids trying to ice and decorate. Yikes!!

ANY advice would be considered. She told me to think about it and then get back to her. What do you all think?

My suggestion would be figure out how much it costs for you to make the cookies (say 20 cents each) then double that for the per cookie cost. Even though you are not decorating them, you still are taking the time to make and bake them. Personally, your idea of food markers sound the smartest to me, especially since there will be alot of children and the ages will be mixed....would not want to have to chaperone that one!

deb

Well firstly I would work out the cost of a batch of cookie dough and how many cookies you will get out of it. Then you will have the base price of each cookie. Then remember that this will probably take you a lot of time to do, more if you do some plain decorating! Don't forget the cost of having your oven on for hours either. I think I would minimum charge actual cost + 25ct (for time and utilities) each for undecorated and actual cost (don't forget to add the royal icing!) + 35ct for plain decorated. If you're going to provide the edible markers, don't forget to charge for those too - my gut feeling is that even if they don't get used up on the day, they'll come back to you pretty useless for anything else (kids don't exactly have a delicate touch!).

Our community Easter celebration includes cookie "decorating", but it's not exactly the kind you'd make to sell, LOL!

The kids get round cookies, a small tub of frosting with a popsicle stick to spread it on the cookie, and several different kinds of sprinkles to choose from (they usually choose to use all if the kinds available )

Most of the fun for the kids is spreading the icing, and while they do make a mess, it's mostly contained to one small area, and they put placemats on the table to catch most of the smears and spills.

Can't help you on pricing, but I would think that they would want just plain cookies so the kids would be able to ice them themselves.

Laura.

Your probably right about time, if I put even a white coating of icing, my time is going to increase bigtime. Not to mention drying time.

I bet just buying a big tub if icing, getting those little solo cups and a stick would be the best way and then just have some easter sprinkles, yeah, that sounds fine. See, I haven't really gotten all the details from her, she just called to mention the idea to see if I was interested. I'm suppose to call her back and let her know if I'm interested, then we'll go over details. So I figured I'd throw it at you guys first before I pitched it to her.

Thanks guys, it all helps! I'll let ya know what happens.

We just did this at our elementary school for Christmas. They offered a the kids just a couple of colors of icing, and then gave them sprinkles or M & Ms. They gave each child a napkin or paper plate, one cookie, a popsicle stick, and then the icing and sprinkles. They loved it and the clean up was so easy!

No no, I didn't mean charge for drying, I just meant I'd have to start making them that much earlier to give them time to dry before handing the order over. Sorry.

I am going to call her back today and see exactly how many she wants and all the details.

Thanks again