How Do You Price A Shaped Cake?
Decorating By lorraine7105 Updated 12 Aug 2007 , 2:22pm by TooMuchCake
My business is growing and I used to do 1 or 2 shaped cakes charging between 10 and 20 an hour. Now it seems every cake is "special" requiring hours of work ahead and 3 hours to put together. How are other bakeries doing it? do they do it? I'm starting to think I'm the only "business" that does this. Help 
Just like a dress that is custom made vs. a dress that is pulled off the rack, there is more labor involved in creating a custom, carved cake. You should charge what it costs .... if it takes 5 hours, then you charge for 5 hours of time.
If they don't understand that, send them to a bakery (who doesn't do those cakes!).
My in-laws are in the automotive industry. I've heard stories of customers in shock on the cost to change a light bulb in the turn signal. "It cost how much just to change a light bulb?!" But they are not just "changing a light bulb". Some of these cars are constructed with no regard to future repairs and the technician has had to remove a lot of screws, panels and even bumpers to get access to the light bulb ..... then take the time to put it all back! It can take over an hour to do all of this.
And the technician expects to be paid for his time. As (I believe it was) Doug who pointed out one day, "What costs more in a car repair ... the parts or the labor?"
Same with cakes.
The bakery I get my supplies from charges $36 for each character cake that is made with the specialty shaped pans. Then they charge more for the sheet cake, if you choose to have the character cake on top of the sheet cake. I'm not sure if this is a good price or not. People have been asking me how much I would charge to do one, so when I was in there last, I picked up the brochure with the prices, flavors, etc just to get an idea of what to charge. I know there will be many people that reply to your thread. These people know more than anyone what the going rate is 
I'm sorry, I thought you were referring to cakes made with the shaped pans. I didn't realize that you were talking about carved cakes.
Carved cakes start at $4.50 per serving with a 20 serving minimum.. and that's for something basic. I am not going to touch a carved cake for under $90.00.. it just ain't happening. It's a lot of work.
I charge a lot more for carved cakes than I do for wedding cakes! Since pricing can be vastly different depending on the area you live in, I won't give you a dollar amount to start with, but I'd say begin with your wedding cake price and go up from there.
Deanna
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