I've been asked about pricing for cake to serve (gulp) 400 people . This is for my best friend, so I will not be charging her my normal rate, but it got me to thinking, do you charge "bulk" pricing once a cake order gets this big? I know it will be a ton of work to make that much cake, but it just seems like there should be a price break at some point. Any opinions out there?

I sure dont. The larger the cake, the more nerve racking and how can I pay for my anti-anxiety meds if I discount the cake I am taking the meds for?

I'm going cake looney...

Here's the way I look at it-Would Colette Peters give you a price break? Nah...probably not. Not that Colette has to watch her back with me lol but what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't make any sense to devalue your work when you get the the point that you are doing ten tons of work on a project! I just did my sil's wedding cake for 250 + the anniversary tier and there is no way I would have started charging less. It was a tremendous amount of work. I have seen places that will give you a break on delivery if it's over a certain amount but that's about it.

Hey puppy-want to share?!?

I don't give volume price breaks either. What I WILL do is work with the bride to help her get control of her actual headcount. If she invited 500 people, odds are good she will only have 300, 325 or MAYBE 350 (and that's guessing high). With those numbers, I will work with her and persuade her to only order cake for no more than 350, not 400. At even just $2 a person, this is saving her $100, so the bride could still say I saved her a hundred bucks....and I didn't devalue my product with a price reduction.

I don't. One of the local "cake places" here advertises prices that drop per serving as the quantity gets larger. My base price isn't quite as high as theirs to start with, but I wouldn't start knocking of $ for larger quantities...

If they are wanting to conserve $ on a huge quantity of servings, I would recommend a large decorated cake to serve, say, 150, and then sheet cakes at my base price to make up the difference; it would save them a ton if they wanted something ornate...as much as several hundred dollars sometimes. If they want 350 servings, that'd be 200 servings of sheet cake at my base price and 150 servings at whatever higher price for a more ornate or a fondant creation.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Thanks everyone for your input. I think I'm going to offer to make a decorated tiered cake for 200 and sheet cakes to serve 200 to save my friend some $$. She only has a budget of $2000 to pay for the space rental, hors devours, cake & decorations. I think she is going to have a very hard time staying within budget, so I'm trying to keep my portion of the bill as low as possible.

Is she doing the food or having someone do it? Sam's club can be your best friend for inexpensive hors devours. They can easily be doctored up.

I just crunched the # that's $5 per person for everything. I hate to sound like a pessimist but I have to agree with you-she is going to have a very difficult time trying to pull that off! Does she have 400 confirmed attendees or is that the # she invited? Usually you only get about 60% of the # you invite. That can help too with the number of servings you need to make. I'm sorry to ask but I'm always so curious about wedding plans/planning.