Ok I just finished figuring some basic pricing on my cakes.
Well I think I will also have to lower my hourly wage.
I calculated an 8" cake for a customer unfortunately she wants one layer one yellow cake, one layer chocolate cake so I would have to charge her for two recipes of cakes. She wants a simple cake with a bead border and edible pearls on the side. I only priced the cake not the pearls! and it comes out to be like this please tell me if this is unreasonable
BC Dream $4.00
Yellow Cake $1.55
Chocolate Cake $1.75
I estimated 2 hours of labor for making, baking, decorating of the cake.
@$12 an hour.
I added $5.00 in disposable materials
for parchment paper, pan spread, disposable bags,food coloring, board, paper to cover board and box. $36.30 not including taxes!
which I can add at the end or add in the cost of ingredients because when I entered the prices of my raw ingredients I did the price before taxes. This is not including the pearls which one bag is $6.99 note I will probably not use the whole bag but will have to paint them in pearl dust $2.99 for a tiny container but goes along way.
I was reading the price list of a local bakery a basic bc cake 8" is $25 but with edible pearl like $10 extra. I wish I could buy these items wholesale and not at the store! How can bakeries basically give these cakes away! I can barely cover my expenses! here's the pictiure of the simlar cake she wants omit the booties. What would you do diffenretly? I am thinking of lowering my labor to $10 an hour. Other than that I have priced every egg exactly what it cost me at the cheapest prices I can find in my city. I feel like I can't compete with the prices of the bakeries and a cake like this looks overpriced, by the way she wants the cake lavender with a white bead border just like it and writing on top only very simple cake. What do you all think? I need to give her the price of the cake before I make it I do not want to tell her to give me whatever she wants because she people don't know the cost of thing to make a cake. She ordered the wedding cake and groom's cake from a bakery but the wedding shower cake from me. She got a wedding cake that feeds 100 and a smallgroom's cake (mayve 24 servings)for $296 sounds pretty reasonable. I feel like I'm over charging. 
$36.30 for that cake WITHOUT pearls is a perfectly reasonable price. I would price it another $10 higher with the edible pearls if you have to pay $6.99 for a bag of them + luster dust + time spent dusting. Have you ever hand-rolled fondant pearls? They would be a lot cheaper if you wanted to go that way, especially if you used MMF. You could also suggest swiss dots of buttercream on the sides instead of the pearls if you want to keep the cost down for your customer.
You are offering a custom product. Don't think of yourself as competing with lower priced bakeries. For what it's worth, I have a $40 minimum, which I am considering raising to $50.
I could definitely get that much here. I just did an 8" round for $30 with nothing fancy.
Yeah, I spend a 2 to 3 dollars making MMF I never thought about making them myself thanks for the tip.
How do you figure how much time a cake will take to make and decorate?
I know this is a big deal to some on PRICE to charge? I am looking at for example the deer mount in my photos.
HOW do you know the time to decorate a say 9x13 sheetcake? what 2.5 hours?
How do you figure how much time a cake will take to make and decorate?
I know this is a big deal to some on PRICE to charge? I am looking at for example the deer mount in my photos.
HOW do you know the time to decorate a say 9x13 sheetcake? what 2.5 hours?
It takes me 2 to 2 1/2 hrs to decorate a sheetcake. I just look at my other projects and guess and the time. If it is more decoration or a lot of fondant cut-outs and tools used I know it will take longer.
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