How Do You Learn How Long A Cake Will Take You?
Decorating By berryblondeboys Updated 5 Aug 2007 , 6:35pm by Elizabeth19
I bit off a bit more than I should have with a cake. I've already spent 5 hours on it and will need another hour to complete (at least). That means, in "labor" I'm getting paid less than $5 an hour!!! DH asked last night when he saw the FBCT I was doing, "How much did you ask for this cake"? I told him, "too little".
I know I'm still new to this and I'll learn, but do you get to a point that you can know by LOOKING at a cake design that you need to charge more for your time? I should have asked for at LEAST $10. The transfer is big, very detailed and I needed 16 colors... that's a lot of mixing and preparing bags (I used parchment triangles - don't need tips this way).
OK, I'll read later. Gotta finish that cake!
Melissa
My husband's family is in the auto-repair business. The car manufacturer's put out lots of "how to repair" books with an estimated time of how long the repair job will take. Your labor is billed based on this number. If the book says 3 hours, you are billed for 3 hours labor. If the garage gets in done in under 3 hours, they're ahead. If it takes them 5 hours, they eat the 2 extra hours.
I would suggest coming up with a base time line, much like we have a base price. A 3-tier, 14/10/6, iced and decorated in BC takes me about 6-7 hours total, including baking time and clean up. Any fondant work, or FBCT or other above-and-beyond work ..... you can easily figure some extra time to add onto the 7-hour base.
A lot of what we do is learned by experience. When you finish this FBCT, you'll know exactly how long it takes you and you will easily be able to add this time to your already calculated base time.
I guess that all just takes practice. I usally can do a FBCT in an hour... about the same time it would take me to do most other decorations... but when I have a GAZILLION colors to mix and lots of detail to work with, I need to learn that it means extra $$$ while I'm giving the quote. I'm sure they would have been equally happy with just Dora and the monkey and not all the "extra" I agreed to when I said, "Sure, I can do that."
When I got there, I had asked for a little more than I thought (I looked it up - in my sleep deprived state I couldn't remember), but this was just too much work for a $55 cake.
Of course, a lot of people here would charge only $25 for that! My husband would forbid cake making if I did that! LOL As it is, this morning he said, "you know, it might be a good idea to talk to me about the cake and request too so that you have two heads coming up with a fair price. That might not be a bad idea.
Melissa
I think we all have under bid at one point or another (or multiple times 
); its the only way you learn since we all work at different speeds and have different areas of expertise. Just chalk it up to experience, if it helps, you will only underbid a design once.... (the next time you will know what it took to make it!) 
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