I went to a jewelry party last night and one of the girls there is getting married and was going on and on about how expensive everything was. The topic of the cake came up since Im a cake decorator and one of my friends was trying to set me up with this chick. She said she already had a decorator who was doing her cake for 400 people and only charging her $100!!! My mouth just dropped when she said that. I asked her if she knew the person and she said nope, just someone shed met through the grapevine.

So the other girls start in about how much their cakes cost, my buddy got hers to feed 250 for only $175, another got one for 200 people for $150 (and she called the woman 2 weeks before the wedding to order it!!), they were all like that. I was just floored!! Thank goodness none of them ever asked me how much my cakes were. I charged $170 for a cake that fed around 90 people. Seems the home bakers in my area like to work for pennies. I dont know how Ill ever compete with them.

WOW! Where are you located? I'm doing a cake for 50 people in a couple of weeks and I'm charging $300.00! I thought I was bottom dollaring it, too!!!

Not knocking any of those bakers, but you always get what you pay for. If they are undercutting thier prices like that, it makes you wonder about the quality of the finished product. (IMHO!)

Are you sure she did'nt miss off a 0
thats 20cents a portion. (is it cents i'm from england). Anyway still chepa for a slice.

God they are really really cheap i wonder what the cakes are like are they any good.

Well i don't know how you going to compete maybe you need to do some calling around get the price for the same cake from different people see how you compere to the average that's what i did. How have you costed could you adjust a bit if you are well off the mark from everyone else.

But then again if you get the business people obviously like your cakes.

GOD LUCK

Wow Gilson, you must live in a ritzy area! $300 for 50 people? That is NYC prices! You go girl!

One of my great life lessons was when I was in a conference call (at my full time day job!) with our Marketing Director and one of our sales reps. The sales rep was trying to get us to lower the price on one of our products for his potential customer. He told the Marketing Director that if we didn't lower the price, then his customer was going to take this business to one of our competitors. I will never forget the lesson I learned that day as I sat there expecting our Director to cave in to the demand rather than lose the business to a competitor. He said:

"You tell that customer that I said Please. Oh PLEASE take this business at this price to my competitor. Because then I won't have to worry about him being my competitor anymore!"

I'm sure that will be the eventual effect.

Lord have mercy! Those prices are SUPER low! LNW- I had to read your post twice to make sure I was reading correctly. I admit that with prices that low, I have to question the quality of them. Did anyone mention how the cakes tasted or looked?

Wow LNW, I am in KC MO and I thought I got a great deal on my wedding cake to feed 175-200 people for $350 from a home baker.....I just dont see how someone can even buy the ingredients for 400 ppl cake for $100 but never having done anything that scale, I wouldnt know.....,.I am not sure all these people were really being honest.

lnw,

don't EVER undercut yourself, if they want to "GIVE" away their time and effort...maybe....


YOU need to buy your cakes from them, and not burn yourself out...hehehehe!

Yeah, even up here in Canada, I often do 4- 14"x14" square cakes, flat iced, basic border for the company I work for, and I charge $150 for the 4 of them and that only feeds about 120.

Maybe the bride in questions has something on the baker, and just didn't want to tell. lol

OMG! (Inject Valley Girl accent here)... $100.00 for 400 people? What insanity takes over these bakers minds??

I would want to see pictures of these cakes that cost them so little. That's my first reaction.

My other thought was...do you really want a cheapo discount wedding cake at your wedding???? What are people thinking? Do they taste-test? Do they check a portfolio? They just hear a magic number and say, "Okay, that's the cake I want!"

It's one thing to have a budget. Weddings are expensive. Cake can be expensive, but I would be weary to order the deal of a century wedding cake.

Don't lower your prices!!!! Cake decorating is an art. Your time, skill, and solid work is worth too much. You are not in the 50 cent a slice league.

Angie

I did a graduation cake for my sil at COST. My mil gave me $100 for that. That was for 120 people.
Wouldn't they be losing money on that?

I can not charge for cakes where I live unless I have a licensed kitchen, and I don't, so I don't know a lot about what to charge, but I KNOW that isn't enough!!
Did she tell you what the cake was going to look like?

I did a tasting for a potential client about 6 months ago.

She described what she wanted, the flavors etc. Her wedding is for 200 people.

I drew up a sketch and figured out how much this cake would cost. $5.00 per serving.

She called me a few days later and told me that she wanted me to do the cake for less. I told her that with all the work needed for what she wanted that was my rock bottom price. She balked and said she would get back to me. I reminded her that I book up quickly.

A week later she called me back. Seems she had a cake tasting with another decorator and was going to go with her. I told her that was fine and wished her luck with her wedding.

Got a call two weeks ago. Same gal. She had attended a wedding where her decorator had made the cake. She said it was horrible, no one would eat it and during the reception the decorations were falling off of the cake. She asked me if I could do her cake. Her wedding is in 3 weeks.

I told her sure..but since this was short notice and I had other bookings it would now cost her an extra $500 for my extra time. I got the booking.

So let those others decorators have the jobs for pennies. When the brides find out what they are actually getting they will come running back to those of us who do quality work.

Those bakers probably don't take into account the overhead expenses and labor expenses that go into making a cake. I would personally want to let them know that they are selling themselves short and that the profit they make on their cakes probably only cover the food cost or not even!

I admit that I used to undercharg when I started out ages ago but I learned my lesson quickly. The truth is I never knew any better before. Today, I even have repeat clients who are willing to pay a high price cos they know I'll do special work.

Never disregard the art, time and hard work that it takes to decorate a cake...if you aren't willing to charge for those things...you're definitely gonna burn out soon!

When I got married in 2000 I had not yet gotten into cakes and did't really bake at all. I went to a local lady who does cakes out of her house (like I do now) and she did a cake for me that fed 350 people and charged $125 - no fee for the fountain or huge stands, nothing cost extra. I remember thinking that that was a deal, but I really didn't know how much of a deal!

Right after the wedding was when I started doing cakes and realized just how cheap this was.

It was great for me at the time...but the bad part...now she is my competition!!

I actually cut my buddies cake. It was a 4 tier hexagon cake with buttercream icing. All was smoothed except right in the front down each tier the icing was textured and sort of looked like a waterfall flowing down the front. Then she put fresh flowers down the front on one side. The cake was stunning. One tier had fresh raspberry filling, the others were just regular flavored cake. It was a very tasty cake. I was stunned last night when she told me how much she paid for it. And the worst part about it was they thought the prices were too high, like they were bragging how expensive their cakes were!!

I really wanted to warn the girl getting married that $100 probably wouldnt even buy the ingredients to make a cake to feed 400 people so buyer beware. But she spent most the night pissing and moaning about how much everything was going to cost so I dont think she would have cared. I think its safe to say I wont be getting any orders from any of them.

Honestly, would you really want to? If she's griping and complaining about those prices, can you imagine what she is like as a customer? I sure wouldn't want to deal with her!!!

Yeah I wouldnt want them as customers either.....I wonder if your friend just forgot how much she paid, my wedding was only 4 years ago and still the details are really fuzzy....

course I am dealing with much the same things, still havent accepted a paid order, but several people have expressed that they would like to use me, but of course only if I can beat grocery store prices...still not sure that I ever want to get into selling cakes...this is just supposed to be for FUN!

I used to have people tell me all the time that my prices were too high, especially for sugar, flour and eggs!!

I responded with, yes...My prices ARE high...but you're not only paying for sugar, flour and eggs...you are also paying for my expertise and THAT is not a comodity that I undersell!

This is what I have been struggling with the most! What to charge? Started cakes as a fun thing for family, then I did a wedding (55-6" rounds fondant, for centerpieces) as a wedding gift. Now requests are coming from people I don't even know. Word of mouth! How do you determine a fair price?

I acutally just got beat out of a cake by Sam's Club The customer wants a 1/2 slab photo cake.

Grocery store price $50
My price $40
Sam's Club price $30.

I can't believe that they charge $30 for a half-slab with a photo!! It's true about you get what you pay for, but still! I told the lady that I couldn't go any lower than $40, and that she really couldn't go wrong with the Sam's cake. She inquired with a few other home bakers, and they were going to charge her $50 and $55 for the cake. My price was significantly lower than the other home bakers, but I still can't beat Sams... it's frustrating

...And an ice sculpture is only frozen water! Flour, sugar and eggs, hhhrrrmmmpphhh.....that ain't really what you're paying for, dearie!

I was married 20 years ago and my wedding cake was $750.00 for 250 people. It was nothing fancy - 3 tiers with posts between the bottom and 2nd tier. Just a white cake with no filling either.

How can anyone make a wedding cake to feed 400 people for $100? The only person who would say they could do it and make a profit would be my grandma, she tried to tell me that she could get all the stuff for my sister's wedding cake to feed 200 for $20.

I paid $350 for my wedding cake (sized to feed 50-60 people) and it was worth the price. Initially I did not want a wedding cake (gasp! I know) since we also had a full sweet table that had 3 types of cake on it, but my mother had her heart set on it.

It was worth it in the end...the cake was gorgeous

This seems to be an issue in lots of different types of services, especially where the customer has direct contact with you throughout the process.

I've done some freelance graphic design work in the past and the same thing comes up there too. I ended up "losing" a potentially profitable client because he thought my prices were too high (I'm already underpriced and therefore won't budge). The same very large, extensive and detailed project (more like 4 projects in 1) that I quoted $1700 to him and thought wasn't enough, he bawked at because "this girl who works at the printer I used to know will do the whoe thing for $500."

Well then .... just let her go ahead and devote the next two months of her time for that. Not I. And BTW, this client is a person who provides a service and charges upwards of $1200 OR MORE for one evening of time, in a very successful company.

I got over losing the work when I realized that he believed it was OK for HIM to charge others that amount for 6 hours of work, but was not willing to PAY others a similar amount for around 100 hours of work.

There is so much more to that story, but at least I don't get bitter every time I start working on a project for them, thinking "i can't believe I'm wasting MY TIME on THIS, for NOTHING!" I just get bitter thinking about the entire thing which I'm thankfully no longer involved in!