I charge $25.00 per hour. with a 4 hour minimum.
I include cake cutting in my cake/buffet pricing, but my rule of thumb is $25-$50 per hour, 4 hour minimum. I got a call last week from a couple who just needs me to come to their receptoin and cut the cake they bought from a bakery. No one in their family is willing to cut the cake. I'm getting $65 for 2 hours ... and that includes standing-around-time.
In defense of my fellow hotel/facility caterers, please allow me to explain a cake-cutting fee.
It's not really a fee to cover the cutting of the cake. It's usually charged when a cake is brought in from an outside source. The hotel/facility is not making one dime off of this cake. The hotel/facilty, however, IS expected to provide the plates, the forks, the staff to cut the cake, the staff to serve the cake, the staff to collect the dirty plates, the dishwasher to wash the plates. etc. There is significant cost for all of that. And did I mention the hotel/facility is not making one dime on this deal?
The cost of the service being provided has to be covered. Which is why a lot of places have started calling it a cake service fee and not a cake cutting fee.
Many places also charge this fee even if you're serving cupcakes, if the bride also wants plates, forks and wants the cupcakes served to the guests instead of a serve-yourself thing. This really confuses folks because "....they're not CUTTING the cake!
" That's right, they're not ... but they ARE incurring expenses to take care of the cake serving tasks.
I totally understand what you are saying Debi. However, at this facility, they DO actually take the cake to the kitchen and slice it up, plate it, and deliver it to the tables. If WE have someone cut and plate it - still using the facility's plates, there is no fee. We had a lengthy discussion about it with them.
I think the fee is totally appropriate considering the extra dishes and manpower involved in doing it. I wasn't slighting them for that. ![]()
Believe it or not, I had it figured at a flat fee of $200 for the evening to cut the cake regardless of the size of event and I would provide plastic forks and a decent disposable plate served buffet style...
As Debi said, it's more the behind the scenes stuff no one thinks about. Up here five years ago there was one place charging $3/slice to cut/serve the cake and $1.75 for cupcakes served at the tables...
I'm just glad that caterers are catching on to the fact that just because it's a cupcake doesn't mean it's any less work (think cupcake liners sticking to the plates and how much extra time it takes to peel those off from the stack)... I'm also glad places are changing it to a cake service fee instead of cake cutting fee which was a misnomer...
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