I am making the cake for my friends wedding. However she also wants me to do a 'Cake Bar' where the refreshment table has several different types of cakes for guests to eat. I just don't know how much to charge for them, I've never done a cake bar before. I've done plenty of other cakes, just not this. Do I charge one rate per cake, or have different rates for each type of cake?

To get an idea, she was thinking of having a few of these cakes:

Coconut Cake
Poppy Seed
Chocolate Fudge
Cheesecake (with different fruit toppings)
Spongecake
Walnut Torte
Carrot Cake
oreo cake
orange dreamsicle cake
Banana Cake

Any help would be much appreciated!

How big is this wedding? I can't see doing a wedding cake AND a cake bar too especially with that many choices of cake. Even if you only offered an 8" 2 layer of each of those flavors that would yield 240 servings of cake! Add to that the wedding cake you are doing and MAN talk about alot of cake! If you do this then charge your normal per serving rate for the 240 servings on the cake bar and the amount of servings in the actual wedding cake.

A 'cake table' search won't get you far, but do a search for 'dessert table' - lots are actually "cake tables"

For example http://ruffledblog.com/diy-dessert-table-tips/

Yeah, that's a TON of cake, and way too many choices for guests. But that's not the question. I would charge per cake, and I already have that figured out on my menu - for example cheesecake costs WAY more then my regular cake, it takes a heck of a lot longer to bake/chill. I price my cakes as a base flavor + vanilla buttercream, and add additional market price charge for fruit, spices or vegetables.

If I were you I'd try and get the bride to pick one or 2 base cake flavors that can easily have spice/fruit added to it, and also use different buttercreams to give even more variety - like my basic white cake recipe can be altered to be a fruit or spice flavor, so I'd encourage vanilla, almond, lemon, poppy... all of which I can make a big batch of white cake, divide into 4 bowls and add my spices/fruit. Can also do chocolate cake, do the same thing but have chocolate, mocha (by adding espresso powder), walnut and Oreo - all from the same big batch of chocolate batter. My point is, I'd never agree to do 11 totally different batters for the same event.

This sounds like a ton of work so do yourself a favor and try and streamline your production as best as you can and price yourself accordingly.

Wow, you are making the wedding cake, and she wants more cake, you would think they would want some other type of dessert. A fun thing to do is to do dessert shooters. Layered cake and mousse in 5 oz. glasses. I buy the glasses (clear plastic at my restaurant supply). I have layered pound cake, whipped cream and strawberries. Chocolate cake with ganache and choc mousse layered. Key lime pie, apple pie, cheesecake, got the idea from a restaurant. If you do a google search you will see all kinds of ideas, they are so pretty, would look really nice on a dessert bar. They would be really easy for everyone to serve themselves.