Ah, yes, yet another pricing question. Aren't you excited??

Anyway, I know a lot of bakeries use per slice pricing for wedding cakes but how do they get those numbers? Use a matrix like the ones people here use or is it always better to give a flat fee?

I prefer to give a flat fee only because I find it so hard to break a cake down and figure just how many slices I can get out of a sheet or round and have it be accurate for a client who has a guest list of 116 people. I tell them that these are the sizes that I offer, the cake will feed this many people and leave it at that. I dont think it's sane of me to charge by the slice and then sit and figure out how many inches I need to cut off the cake to make it a strange size. It's the last thing that I (as well and the bride) need to worry about. JMHO

I agree most couples like to have the left over cake, It is not like you make less cake if there is one less person. I think the per slice seems kind of shady.

I've spent most of the afternoon working out flat fees for all the different sizes/shapes of pans I've got. I have an old 1970s cake book that someone gave me and they suggest in there that you work out how much each pan holds and then you can work out your basic ingredient costs from there. I'm a scratch baker and was having real problems with pricing my cakes fairly, and when I used this method and worked out what I should be charging, I was way underpricing myself! I didn't realise that my ingredients were costing me quite so much. For example, using this system I found that the last cake I made (a 2-layer 10x6in sheet cake with full buttercream decoration), had cost me E22.50 in ingredients, it took me 3 hours to make and decorate and I only charged E35!!! Since using the new pricing method, I now know to charge E45 for the same cake - which still isn't very much per hour for my wage, but better than before! I will charge more for fondant, FBCTs, handmade flowers etc though!