True, but you are funny!

As a fellow Brit I know exactly where you're coming from on the Asda thing. I get the one's "Can I have a Ben 10 cake for little Tommy" & when you tell them the price you can hear it in their voices that they expected it to be the same price as Asda. Well I'm sorry I make real cakes & they cost. If you want a cake that tastes like cardboard, has 2" of sugarpaste & is full of additives & preservatives then you take your £10 to Asda. Sorry to rant but supermarket cakes really bug me & so do the people who expect mine to be the same.

As for the unexperienced naive beginner that some of you mention I've also been there. I asked round friends what prices they were charging & charged the same, thinking that that was the going rate (£15 for a 10") It wasn't untilI went to college & realised how much I was underselling myself. My dh still thinks I do now but when you've got 2 cake shops in the area plus Asda lol you've got to find a balance somewhere to get the customers.

SillyOldPoohBear,
I know exactly what you mean. I had a call last Tuesday from a woman who wanted a cake that Friday. First I try to make customers give me 2 weeks on specialty cakes because there may be supplies I need to order plus customers dont seem to understand it takes more than a day to create a huge (2ft long) monster truck. She wanted a monster truck by that Friday. I tried talking her out of it but she wouldnt budge because it was little Cody's bday. I gave in. When I told her the price she literally made spitting sounds and told me she was thinking of it only costing $30. I told her it was not an easy task to create a standing monster truck. I would have to build a frame, cook, carve, cover, and decorate all by Friday. Then she told me that she had a friend who could make it for her for that price. My response was, "Well, I guess you need to get your friend to make the cake then". Then she hung up. Oh, and I told her I was getting a wisdom tooth pulled that Thursday before she heard price and she still wanted by Friday.

I'm not speaking of newbies, homebakers, inquisitive folks, and so on and I think I can say that the other posters here aren't either.

The cakers I'm speaking of are those who are charging $.75 per serving when all the other cake shops in the area are priced at $3 per serving.
Even with a cake mix on sale and a bucket of icing from Sam's Club, no one can make a true profit charging $.75 per serving. They might sell the cake for $25 and spend $20 on mix, icing, eggs, oil, a board, paste color, and a bakery box and figure that means they made five bucks. They're not counting the cost of turning on the oven, of the gas used to drive to 2 or 3 stores to get the supplies along with wear & tear. They're not counting wages/labor for getting the supplies, baking the cake, leveling & torting, decorating, packaging, and delivering the cake. They're not accounting for income tax that needs to be paid on that $25.

They spent $20 to buy the hardware and someone gave them $25 so they're $5 ahead - that's the mindset I'm speaking of.

If your cakes are being sold (legally) at enough markup to account for all the above and any other incidentals while being in line with other area cake shops, there isn't an issue in the world if you're a new decorator baking from home. That's fantastic, actually! But there's a big difference between the two.

Exactly what I was thinking. I agree with what everyone is saying about never undercutting or cheating yourself and other local businesses, but please allow for those of us who, like myself, kind of stumbled into a love of and talent for cake decorating. My experience is very similar to the PP above. I have never sought to be "The Cheap Cake Lady", but it's taking some trial and error to get where I need to be.

To me it's still mind-boggling that anyone is willing to pay over $100 for something I made!

Beautiful!!!!!!

Caution on the "cake union" .... actions like this can be construed as price fixing, which is *SO* totally frowned upon by the govt!

There is a reason you don't find a Macy's or a Nordstrom's in every little po-dunk town in the country. Because the market won't support these stores in certain areas. And sorry to say, if it costs you $50 to make a cake and your market area won't support pricing a cake out at $250 to cover ALL of your expenses (not just ingredients, but ALL expenses), then openign a custom desing cake shop in that area just isn't going to fly. Get a new idea .... or move to an area that WILL support those prices.

The "excuse" of no one will pay that price here just makes my a$$ tired. When I came on to CC, I'd been making/pricing cakes for 25 years and thought I was pretty good at it. When I saw what people were getting for cakes, I didn't step back, wring my little hands, wrinkle up my face and whine about "people will NEVER pay that for a cake HERE!" What I did was step UP, form my fightin' fist, set a DETERMINED look on my face and proudly proclaimed, "If these people can do it, then so can I!" and my prices basically DOUBLED in a few months. With *NO* adverse affects, might I add!

If "they won't pay that price here", then stop pretending to be a business and move on to something else. I will never NEVER understand the logic of going broke in your own so-called business just so you won't make the general public "mad" about having to pay the right price for something.

I won't pay $70,000 for a car but that doesnt' stop Cadillace from selling Escalades at that price! It also doesnt' cause them to lower their price. They pretty much look at me, wave me away as they say (in their W.C. Fields voice), "Get away from me kid, ya bother me!"

If they WILL pay those prices in your area, then get in the ballgame and start thinking like a business (wo)man. "Guilt" about being paid a fair wage for the work and the art you create is NOT part of business thinking.

Yeah, I got my mom-finger going on this one, but I also just got back from vacation, and I'm tired and cranky!

OMG Kim I thought I got some bad ones. I'd have defo told her to go give her friend $30 & see how far she gets. I know exactly where your coming from on that one. Regular cakes are bad enough, with some people, but with sculpted novelty cakes they just don't have a clue. Ever get the "If I have a smaller one will it cost less?" It doesn't matter if it's 6 inches or 6 foot there is still the same amount of work. Ok there's a lot more cost involved as far as ingredients are concerned but it's still the same amount of work!!!!

As for short notice don't start me on that one, that's a whole other discussion lol. I had one last week, who's a regular BTW. She orders a cake weeks ago for her daughters boyfs 18th & told me she wanted it on Friday. She then phoned me Wednesday afternoon & said she wanted her cake on Thursday! What gets me is that people just don't get that creating a cake takes time & effort, it's not a 10 minute job (how I wish it was then I really would be raking it in ) It wouldn't normally be a problem but I'd had 2 days out because my dh had suprised me for our anniversary & then I had a hospital appointment on the Wednesday, all of which she knew because she works wth him. Anyway long story short I was still baking at 10.30pm on Wednesday just because she decided to change her mind at the last minute.

Makes you wonder why you do it sometimes but then you remember the good customers, who appreciate your work & the price it costs

Please don't take this the wrong way. And I haven't even looked at your cakes, so don't take this as an opinion of your skills. It's meant as a general opinion on the topic... But I would say that if your cakes are not yet good enough for you to be charging what a professional cake goes for, then you are not ready to be selling cakes professionally.

Plumbers don't start fixing peoples pipes for real cheap because they're not up to snuff with their plumbing skills yet. They apprentice or train until they are at a professional level where they can compete in the market, both price and quality-wise.

So if you charge $25 for a cake because it's not up to the professional standards of the cakes you admire here, keep practicing/go to school/work in a bakery until your skills are at a professional level. just because you have discovered you have a talent for something and like doing it, doesn't mean you should jump into business before you are ready, despite the pressure of family and friends.

This is for your benefit as well as the bakers that are undercut. I mean it cost about as much to make a bad cake as it does a good one. And you shouldn't have to work for nearly free just because you're not ready to be professional yet. So wait until you're ready and can work for a decent fee. (again, not calling your cakes "bad" as I haven't looked at anyone's in this thread's cakes)

Of course, I'm not the cake police, and anyone can do whatever they want, as long as it's legal. But that's the way I see it.

Coincidentally, the baker in that ad is the OP in this heated thread...

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopicp-6849738-.html#6849738

DOH!

oops...sorry about that

As long as your quality of work is comparable, of course it is. I've seen some decorators who crank out masterpieces for their 3rd cake, and I've seen decorators who've been around for 20 years who ..... can't crank out a masterpiece, to put it nicely.
Pay yourself what you're worth!!