First, do you have a shop outside your home??

2nd, how many wedding cakes do you usually book in a given year???

do you have employees??


thanks

Yes, I have a shop in a strip mall.

Yes, I have part time employees ..... 6 high school girls who come in 2-3 times a week to do nothing but make cookie dough balls for me. When school is out, they will do this AND bake the cookies for stocking the front retail counter AND work front counter retail. I also have a group of folks who work the catering/wedding events on the weekends. I usually use 2-5 people per event, depending on size and types of foods.

I dont' count number of wedding cakes, but I count number of events.

2007:
- 42 events;
- 5.9% of sales were wedding cake only.
- 57.7% of sales were buffet only.
- Balance of sales were cake and buffet.

2008 so far:
- 48 events booked
- 10.2% of sales are wedding cake only. (So my cake-only sales have doubled over last years numbers.)
- 52.3% of sales are buffet only.
- 37.5% of sales are cake and buffet.

indydebi, can you share more about your retail counter? will it be just cookies or will you have other goodies, cake by the slice, etc.?

I do not have a retail shop. But every year I get the urge.
I do 90 weddings a year, 2-6 per weekend in the "active" season.
I had a part-time employee once, but it turned out to be more trouble than it was worth. I got myself better organized. DH helps tremendously with deliveries.

I do not have a outside shop..I have a home based shop.I do not do weddings however I have 6-7 cakes booked for almost every weekend all year..I think I had none Easter weekend..first time in 3 years....It is just me because I can't/don't want to pay someone else when I can pretty much handle it...I do everything from Birthdays to Anniversaries,Baby Showers,Baptisms,a few naughty cakes but not many...and just recently I have stopped doing cookies because they have become too time consuming and you make no money.By the time I baked,decorated,packaged etc..I figured I was making about $5.00 an hour...not enough to take time away from my family and the ingredients have risen 40% in the last 2 years.

I do not have a shop with storefront hours. I work by appointment only. I do cakes and catering. So far this year, I have 71 cakes, and 28 catered events. I have an absolutely terrific DH who helps alot. I hire 3 - 5 part time workers when I am catering an event. Other than that, I'm on my own!

- I do have a shop outside the home

- On average we do between 250-275 wedding cakes per year (I counted 264 in 07... but I may have missed a few)

- The only employees are my wife & I

Best of luck!

I have a shop and have 125 weddings at the moment for 2008 with an avarage of 6 occassion cakes per weekend. My daughter has just started working full time with me. Today I had a high school student in to help, we have 7 wedding cakes and 6 occassion cakes due for tomorrow. And what am I doing on CC. break time....

Hi, I am fairly new to this site but I love it, it is so addicting , anyway I have a little italian restaurant, so customers would come here to celebrate birthdays, and of course my dear husband started seeing $$ symbols in his eyes , so he signed me up for wilton classes, and that is how we started making cakes and cupcakes, we do about 15 cakes a month and about 10 cupcakes towers a month & we are loving it