Hi everyone. Looking for some input sorry if this is long... I became addicted to caking about a year and a half ago. I am now in the process of becoming licensed to be able to do so from home in my spare time. Up till now I've done them for friends but mainly practice cakes.
First and foremost I am really unsure about my pricing. I've shopped the local bakeries and the going price seems to be $3.50 for buttercream & $4.50-$5.00 for fondant. My question is my experience compared to theirs is minimal so how much lower should my prices be? For instance if someone called me tomorrow inquiring about a wedding cake...first of all I would panic..second I would drop over!! lol But we all have to take the plunge at some point right? So I am thinking $2.50 or $3 for BC and $4 for fondant.
Secondly, what would I say when they ask "you've done wedding cakes before right"?
Feel free to look at my pictures in order to come up with a price you feel it's worth...I don't bruise easily! lol (Unless you base it off the first two cakes I did in class which I'm sure you can pick out! lol)

Oh yea, another tricky part that confuses me is how much extra to charge for the extras..like fondant figures or that sort of thing?? Thanks for any and all input!!

There's tons on here about pricing. I think IndyDebi has some posts. First and foremost cover your costs. A simple spreadsheet can help you be sure your ingredients are covered.

Ah, welcome to all of the questions that we've all asked ourselves.

Unfortunately, this is one question that we can't really help you with. YOU have to decide what YOU think your work is worth and price accordingly.

I'm assuming that you've run your numbers to determine what kind of profit you will make at the various price points. If you haven't, you definitely need to do that before you can even think about how much to charge.

You also need to consider when you raise your prices, how will your customers react? How much work do you need to do to get to a point where you do raise your prices?

Lastly, as IndyDebi is fond of saying, you want to keep the company of those you want to be like (I don't remember the exact phrase, help me out Debi!). If you want to be considered in the same league as the $4-$5 per serving crowd, you need to KNOW that you do $4-$5 per serving work.

Sorry- forgot to address the "You've done wedding cakes before, right?"

You can always tell your first bride "Even a surgeon has a first patient." If you find it necessary, offer to do one or two deeply discounted cakes to get live practice (probably can find a taker on CL), but definitely do a few dummies first and at least one real cake practice.

If you have done stacked cakes, but not wedding cakes, I would use that. "While I haven't had the opportunity to create a wedding cake just yet, I have done several stacked cakes [show the client those in your portfolio]. The only difference is that wedding cakes take longer to create due to the size and complexity."

I've spent hours and hours reading posts about everything from A-Z and plan to continue because frankly...I can't get enough! lol I'm sure every baker out there had these same questions and maybe even doubts in the beginning....
Oh...great idea about the CL thing!