Hi,

A bride wants to cut costs and is asking me if I would do fake cakes and if that would cut down on the costs. I have no experience with this. She is also considering a slab cake for the kitchen to cut. How do I figure how much to charge for a fake cake!?

I charge $.75/serv. less than real cake ONLY because it's more convenient for me to not have to bake (which I hate) and less cleaning as a result of that. I can also work on the cake over the course of weeks instead of days since the "cake" doesn't need to remain fresh!

Generally it doesn't cost any less to make/decorate a fake cake (the styrofoam dummies in fact are usually more expensive than cake ingredients).......it also takes just as long to decorate a fake cake, but there are no dowels involved and it's easy to transport and just more convenient for me, so I do offer a bit of a reduced rate on them.

However, by the time you pay for the fake cake AND the slab cake...it will cost more than if you just got the main cake made of real cake.

The upside to the fake cake for the bride is if she wants a 5 tiered cake and only needs to serve 75 people, you can have a grand looking cake without a TON of leftovers. Also, a bride could easily pick up a 4 tiered fake cake, put it in the back of their car and take the slab cakes and not have to worry about delivery/set up costs associated with a tiered cake.

HTH

Refer her to this article in my blog where I run the numbers to show them that it can actually cost them MORE to get fake cakes in the design:

http://cateritsimple.blogspot.com/search/label/fake%20cake

indy - I wish I would have had access to that article a week ago!! I had a bride that wants a cake design that is to serve 185 to serve 70, but doesn't want to pay for the fake tiers like I require. I am copying and saving that one and printing it for my "book" for wedding bookings (if you don't mind) THANK YOU!