Hi,

I have 2 cakes due next week and I was wondering what you would charge for a 12x12x2, 2 layer choc. fudge cake. It will be torted and filled with the cookies and cream filling (WBH) iced in chocolate bc. It will have 24 chocolate covered strawberries and 3 purple (why I don't know, it's what the customer wants) with basic borders and Happy Birthday written on it. Thanks for your help.

The other cake is for a graduation. It will be 3 tier 12", 10" and 8" doulble layers torted. The 12" will be a white butter cake with lemon filling, the 10" will be a choc. cake with cookies and cream filling and the 8" will be a strawberry with a cream cheese icing as a filling. It will be fondant(mmf) with scroll work on all 3 tiers with royal blue ribbon around the bottom of each tier. I have a graduation topper for the cake. I have also gotten graduation caps (the kind you can fill with wedding mints) and have made scrolls for each of the 7 graduates with their names on it. I was planning on making 7 individual 6"x3" individual cakes decorated like the main one for each of the graduates but now I'm not sure since I have this other cake to complete 2 days before the graduation. Anyway I am not charging for this cake as it's a present for my sil but would be interested in the pricing in case someone asks. There will be 80 to 100 people there so it will also be great for advertising my cakes.

Thanks for any help.

Jo-Ann

Help please. Even ballpark figures would help.
Thanx

Sorry I can't help but I'll give you bump.

Ok, the graduation cake seems pretty basic, just big and lots of cake. So; figure up how many people that would feed, and then figure up a per-serving price.
For the B-day cake, I would do a price for the cake, and then charge extra for the strawberries, on top of the cake price. HTH.

Hard to give pricing advise... I guess a lot has to depend on what cakes go for in your area (and how you compare to that)... ? I charge $50 for a 12" cake - and that's base price. Special flavoring/filling and special/detail decor - I charge more (as should you). I charge $1.00 per chocolate covered berry. If this were my order, it would run about $85.00.

Can't help you much on your grad cake... lot's to factor in there! It's basically a wedding cake, and I would charge as such. Note: Charge your customers for "special orders" (i.e., different flavor cakes, cream cheese frosting, vs. buttercream, vs. fondant) - these prices are all going to vary. I would figure each cake seperate, then total it. Do you have an idea what you would charge if this were a wedding cake? That would be a start. Don't under quote - if someone asks how much something like that would cost - be prepared!

This really depends on area.

Call a few local bakeries and see what they'd charge and don't be afraid to charge more than them!

Also, sometimes people add up the expenses of their ingredients, etc. and multiply by 2.5 or 3.

If you price a little higher, you can easily come down, but if you price too low......well.....anyway.........Good Luck!

I'd charge at least $250 for the tiered cake, about $20 each for the little 6in cakes, and the chocolate fudge/strawberry 12in would be about $100 - but that's just me!

I also agree that it would depend on the area you live as well as how much of a break you are willing to cut "family and friends' if that applys to your situation.

However a friend of mine who used to have a cake decorating business used to charge per slice. You figure out about how many people the cake would feed and then it's anywhere from $1.25 a slice on up. The slice price would also depend on how detailed the cake was (example: a decorated, fondant covered cake would be about $1.85 a slice where as standard butter cream would be about $1.25 a slice)

Also I heard a method of doing the cost of materials plus $2.00 an hour for labor and times that by 3.

Hope this helps, even a little bit!

You should check out the price matrix; its totally cool. you plug in the size of the cake(s), what kind of fondant or buttercream you are using, any extra you want to charge, and it calculates it all for you. IF I can find the link, I will attach it.

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-5711-price.html+matrix

Here's the price matrix