I need help determining pricing. (Long Post--sorry)

I have a request for a stacked shoe box cake. The customer emailed me a photo that she found on a website. The cake has 3 stacked cake boxes with 3 shoes and a few other embellishements (coin purse, coins, and receipt made out of fondant or gumpaste). She only wants the cake to serve about 25 people and agreed to go down to 2 boxes instead of three. She wants one to be chocolate cake with a turtle filling and the second hazelnut with hazelnut filling.

I need to contact her today to finalize pricing. I searched on a local, established baker's site in my area. In her gallery she has a cake with 2 shoe boxes and one gumpaste shoe to serve 50 priced at $200. So based on that I was thinking to charge $100 for 25 sevings.

Should I just calculate based on labor and time or also the more specialty items such as the filling?

Also, does anybody have good recipes for turtle filling, hazelnut filling, and hazelnut cake? The customer was very vague on the hazelnut. She said the hazelnut cake was a tan color.

I think starting at $100 works but then charge her for the extra shoes if you are still doing the three shoes that she requested.

Happy Caking!

Are the cakes you are baking 25 servings? Then i would say $100 is a good price. But if your 2 cakes are more than 25 servings she needs to pay for the extra servings. Does this make sense? i haven't had coffee yet this morning! lol

I agree with revel. What size cakes are you making for the boxes? Based on the 50 serving cake thats $4 a person. So, if the 2 cakes you are making are 25 servings combined $100 is a good price but if they are more then you should charge accordingly. Sometimes due to the design the customer wants they may need to pay for extra servings. HTH!

Thank you all. I was thinking of using either a 9x12 or 9x13 pan. The 9x12 is one of the bakers choice with the sharp edge so I won't have to trim to square up. My intent is to cut and stack so one pan would stack to make a 9x6 box.

Oh and she now wants it to serve 25-30 people and she really wants the 3 stacked look and 3 shoes so I was going to charge her $115.

Also, do you all think I should stack at the location? The graduation party is going to be held on the private patio of a local restaurant. I have never been to this place but it is a hugely popular Sports Grill. On a Friday nights it is packed and I don't know the layout of it is, the customer is supposed to call me early next week once she confirms where her party will be set up in the restaurant.

Sculptures should start at at least $6 a seving. Bare bones minimum.

If you are doing three 9x13's to achieve this, that's 72 servings give or take a few. So somewhere North of $400 is what your client is requesting. Plus the cost of the shoes.

Your job, Ms. Phelps, is to help the client realize that her taste buds are asking for a high dollar creation and advise her what you can do for $100. This post will self-destruct probably during the next crash.

Also you need to consider a minimum for sculptures--if you did this same cake 1/2 the size to make the correct amount of servings you will be doing the same amount of work. So do you think $200-250 is a good price for that.

I mean, think of it, a 3-tier cake sculpture for $100?--do you think that's fair? I mean just a 3-tier cake should be at least a hunnerd bux yes?

Thanks everyone...what can I say I am still trying to figure this out...I make the sculpted cakes for my family so I don't calculate or measure. If I want to turn a profit I need to get this right. I found a couple examples of pricing charts on CC and elsewhere online.

So a single 9x13 layer yields about 24 serving. Splitting a single layer with filling will increase the yield, I guess...so basically I have approximately 1-1/2 single cake layers to work with to accomodate her request for 30.

So three is definitely out.

I guess I have some calculations to do and a call to make. Please keep the suggestions coming--all are greatly appreciated. Attached is a copy of the cake she would like me to duplicate.

You are selling yourself WAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY short if you are only going to charge $115 for a cake like that. Good luck and have fun!

At least $150