I would agree with Mamas, I would charge $50-65 for that cake. Out here in Southern CA that is what a decent cake shop would charge. I have even paid that amount for a cake similar in size, filling and decor and I paid $65 for it...but that was before I started making my own cakes a year ago.
wow Okay i have just started selling cake so i don't really know what is a normal price to charge . thanks.
You can definately at least get $45!
I had the hardest time with deciding on pricing when I first started out and I still get squimish about it. Two things helped me to get over it (sort of anyway). The first was going on line to different sites and realizing I was way underselling myself and the second was being really honest and sitting down and calculating to the cent (I used Fresh Direct Pricing) how much my ingredients cost me.
I wanted to charage $15 for a 8" carrot cake with nuts and raisins and cream cheese frosting until I worked out the math and realized that at the time it was costing me $11 to make it. I now charge $30. I have gotten the cost of my ingredients down but factoring in my time, electricity, gas, the cost of my equiptment, packaging ect. I am finally starting to do more than just break even. I have yet to charge enough to even pay myself $5 an hour but I have finally found a way to get the cost of my packaging down and hope to see a bigger profit soon.
If you think of all these things you will start to become irrate when people want to low ball you. Trust me.
That serves about 32 people, so you're selling each slice at about $.94.
You mean for my carrot cake? I guess but it is a simple cake with no elaborate details. This is the second year I have been doing this and I consistently have been able to get my cost down and raise my prices. I can only go as high as the market will bear. People just aren't willing to pay someone working out of their home what they would pay someone in a bakery or salon. So my challenge is to try and find quality ingredients for a cheap as I can get them so that more of the price is going in my pocket as opossed to towards ingredients.
Now for wedding cakes I charge anywhere from $2.50 to $4.00 a slice. those are a lot more work than my simple 8".
What would you charge?
P.S. you can't always go by those charts. You have to rely on your own experience. I have not ever been able to feed 32 people with an 8" cake. the most I would attempt would be 24 and I am not even sure about that!
I was actually making that comment to the original poster's estimate of $30 for a 9".
BUT. . .
Now I read your post, and think that probably about $1.25-1.90 p/s would be a reasonable price for a carrot cake.
$.90 sounds awfully low for a cake made in NY. 
I was actually making that comment to the original poster's estimate of $30 for a 9".
BUT. . .
Now I read your post, and think that probably about $1.25-1.90 p/s would be a reasonable price for a carrot cake.
$.90 sounds awfully low for a cake made in NY.
Yeah I agree $.90 would be ridiculous. I think Collette Peters has some of the most reasonable cake charts. She suggests that an 8" serves 20 and that would mean that my 8" cake is priced at about $1.50 a slice. Still low but ok for now. Pricing is not easy. There is a whole field dedicated to the art of pricing so I try to cut myself some slack.
Mamas, what is "fresh direct pricing"?
www.freshdirect.com is an online gourmet grocery store that may or not be in your area. I used them to get the price of each of my ingreidients because their prices are competitive and comparable to the prices in the supermarkets in my area. If you go to the site and punch in your zip code they will tell you if they service your area. It is really cool to be able to get someone to deliver fresh groceries to your home.
I could easily have gone up and down the isles of my local supermarket but I had the brain storm at 2am and their pricing was what I went with. I based my cake prices on those ingredient prices and then set out to find the ingredient prices cheaper while keeping the cake prices the same or raising them. I get the bulk of my ingredients/packaging from BJ's, Costco and Restaurant Depo which has helped to increase my profits.
Thanks for your help i'm going to sit down and actually work the pricing of each cake i make. I wondering if you guys could look at my photos and leave comments , i guess i put them on at the wrong time of day cause i hardly ever get feedback . Thanks
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