Hi guys I live in Ireland and was just wondering if any of you have ever sold cupcakes/cakes at open air fairs or markets?

I am thinking of doing this in May for a market lasting over 2 days where apparently thousands of people will attend this.

I am not sure about how many cupcakes to make. I was thinking about 1000. Is this crazy or I am worried its not enough!!!

Before any ingredients have been bought its costing almost £300 to sell at the market. This is for the stall and insurance. I think I would spend another £150 on boxes to sell them in and ingredients.

I was thinking of selling them in boxes of 2. A box of 2 cupcakes for £2.50 (not sure what that would be in dollars).

Not even sure if this price will cover costs plus make a profit.

Anyone out there ever done this before? XX

The first thing u need to do is check u can sell homemade stuff - it doesn't sound like u already have a business? I don't know what the Irish equivalent is, but start with environmental health.

Secondly u need to sit down and work out a price - u can't just pull a number out of the air and hope that covers it. I've got to say that sounds cheap for 2 cupcakes, even if they were plain and unboxed. U need to cover your wage as well as the cost of the table.

As for numbers... Can u check the site gets asany visitors as they claim? Maybe just ask some of the other venues. There have been post before about how to work it out, it is (or seems to me!) really tricky!

Do give thought to ur table display, there are some really good pics kicking around, unfortunatly I lost my links to the ones I liked!
xx

Ok that works out at £1.25 a cupcake which is what I was selling them for at an xmas fair in the UK or buy 4 get one free bringing them down to £1 each. Now I made a nice little profit but I did not have to pay anything for the stall, just the boxes which were £25 for 100. I used one size for all, basically a box I could fit 5 in. In fairness very few people bought less than 5.

Anyway, if you have got to fork out £300 before ingredients you are going to have to sell a lot before turning a profit.

I sold 200 and after ingredients turned £120 profit, so to clear the £300 you are going to need to sell nearly 600 to cover that, then you are going to need to pay for the ingredients, so to turn a profit for the amount you are going to need to make, you are easily going to need to sell 1000 and that is a lot of cuppies to make.

It took roundabout 20 hours to make 250 so times that by 4 to make your 1000. For the amount of profit you are talking is it worth it.

Fairs are good, but not if you have to pay that sort of money before you start.

My suggestion would be start at smaller fairs where there is little or no charge, you will still build up a customer base, and it wont be so much work in one go.

HTH

Thanks for the input. Yeah I dont have a proper up and running business as yet. Am in process of getting environmental health sorted and I know about the whole working out prices according to how much time and money youve spent etc etc and I have done this with proper cakes Ive made but was trying to come up with a price that people will be happy to pay for a cupcake at a funfair and also try and keep myself happy too lol. Will perhaps look at a smaller cheaper fair as there will be many of them over the summer.

Cheers

Your price per cake will sell, mine did, i typed an error in my answer, I sold 230 of my 250 which for the length of time I was there I didn't think was bad and that was my first so I wasn't sure how many to do.

I think you would struggle if you priced them any higher tho.