HI! want to get a general opinion on pricing a cake. Please be gentle, the cake is mine ;)
I am trying to figure out what is the right amount to charge for a cake like this. Let me give you the info on the cake:
CAKE:
Top tier-6" round Chocolate Butter cake, buttercream, hazelnut mousse, chocolate ganache over the entire tier under the fondant basket weave.
Bottom tier-10" square Golden Butter cake, buttercream, hazelnut mousse, cookies'n'cream filling, chocolate ganache, fondant.
Decorations: Flowers, bow, curlicues, pearl balls-gum paste. Basket weave-fondant.
I count my servings as 1.5X2Xtier height, so the 6" is 12 servings and 10" is 30.
Every single element in the cake (except for gum paste and fondant, those are Satin Ice) were made from scratch.
Basketweave:
I couldn't find my basketweave embosser (brilliant planning, I know), so after losing a ton of time, decided to figure out how to do it by hand. Amended a tutorial I found online.. With my pasta roller, I cut fettuccine and spaghetti strips of fondant. The spaghetti strips (doubled) went up as vertical lines, then cut the fettuccine strips to fit spaces. Time-consuming, no doubt, but I think it turned out adorable. Will probably do this again, but will charge accordingly.
So... the cake serves 40, I charged $352. The customer was really nice and actually asked what he should add for delivery and gratuity. I suggested $30 delivery charge and told him gratuity was not necessary.. He told me that unless i built it into the cake price (ha, of course not), I was worth it and he'd add 20%. So at delivery, he handed me a check for $450, which was a nice surprise.
So that's the entire background. Am I on target? too low? Too high? Are my servings too generous a size? What would YOU charge for a cake like this? Please share your opinion with me!
Since I do not sell cakes I can not say but I would like to comment at how beautiful your cake is!! It is gorgeous!! You did an excellent job!! Very pretty!!
AHave you added up all your overhead and costs, including all ingredients and non-edibles such as boxes, boards, supports, wires, etc? How much time did this project take?
Thank you, remnant ;)
Jedi, good questions.. I haven't added up what the inedible cost, will do that tonight. The cake probably took about 20 hours. I didn't count exactly. I'm slower than I should be with a lot of things, I realize, and getting faster and faster at a lot of things.
I want to find that balance between what a cake should really be priced at and what people would be willing to pay (NOT comparing my work to Costco or anything like that). Just trying to get a feel for what others think would be a fair price to charge. Even though I realize markets will bear different caps in different regions, I would still like to hear opinions from seasoned bakers on what they would consider an fair price tag.
I think that cake is amazing! I agree with adding up your supplies and figuring in time. With time, figure an hourly wage that is equal to your talent. What you are doing with sugar there is something not every decorator can do. You can price up for that. I've recently figured out I'm undercharging. I was doing cakes for $50-60 that took me 5-10 hours. Sometimes I was just breaking even on supplies! I think the price you charged was perfect for such a highly decorated cake.
AI'm actually going to invest in CakeBoss software and really break down the cake in there. I kept track of how many batches of batter each flavor took and how much ganache i used, so I feel I will be able to come pretty close to estimating what ingredients cost.
Not too sure about how to price sugar flowers. But estimated five hours and charged $20 an hour, but it took me way longer:)
OMG where did you find the tutorial .
This is beautiful and where I from they wouldn't want to pay me 150 for it, because they don't understand the time and amount of money it cause for ingredients. I too wouldn't know what to charge for this but lord knows if someone gave me 450 for a cake I would CRY....
Great job
i would expect to use no more than 2 hours time to assemble the tiers and decorate this cake after shopping/baking including the time to make the flowers, not including the time to let them dry -- you've got a half dozen roses -- about three dozen blossoms on wires, a couple of pearls, the bow, some curliques, the fondant is impressed and i would use a different basket method or use a pasta machine to do the basket, the two lids --
to me it's 60 servings and you charged under $6 per serving -- i think that's low for a 3-d sculpture --
your client is very generous -- is his name "grandpa"? 
what did you make the lids out of --
i love the colors -- it's a beautiful cake --
sounds like you were designing as you went along and that's how it got to 20 hours?
Quote:
OMG where did you find the tutorial .
This is beautiful and where I from they wouldn't want to pay me 150 for it, because they don't understand the time and amount of money it cause for ingredients. I too wouldn't know what to charge for this but lord knows if someone gave me 450 for a cake I would CRY....
Great job
here ya go :) https://www.facebook.com/notes/faye-cahill-cake-design/fondant-waffle-weave-tutorial/10151092122516717
Quote:
i would expect to use no more than 2 hours time to assemble the tiers and decorate this cake after shopping/baking including the time to make the flowers, not including the time to let them dry -- you've got a half dozen roses -- about three dozen blossoms on wires, a couple of pearls, the bow, some curliques, the fondant is impressed and i would use a different basket method or use a pasta machine to do the basket, the two lids --
to me it's 60 servings and you charged under $6 per serving -- i think that's low for a 3-d sculpture --
your client is very generous -- is his name "grandpa"?
what did you make the lids out of --
i love the colors -- it's a beautiful cake --
sounds like you were designing as you went along and that's how it got to 20 hours?
K8, thank you for your input and the comliment :)
No, I didn't design a cake as I was going :) I talk with a customer, get their ideas, design a sketch, we go back and forth until we have THE cake on paper, then I price it out and move forward.
I'm not a professional baker, so a lot of things still take me longer than they should. The cakes are made in my home kitchen, with limited space and equipment. That will always equal longer time. I have a regular KitchenAid mixer, so making two batches of cake batter at a time adds time (probably 2 hours to make batter, another hour for buttercream batches, another 30 min for other fillings). This cake was different flavors, so extra time for that.
I take great care to make sure my cakes are as spectacular on the inside as they are on the outside. So, all fillings are made from scratch (expected), but I also ganache the entire cake using the upside down method. Another hour to hour and a half to cover tiers in ganache. Hour to clean the cake up after chilling/freezing and cover in fondant.
The fondant is not embossed, it's stenciled. The basket weave was an unexpected bump in the road, but led to learning a new technique, so I'm all good with that. I *was* going to use a basket weave embosser, easy peasy (but not as realistic looking), but misplaced it. So doing the basket weave the way i did took 2 hours. Next time, now that i figured it out, it'll take less time, for sure. You are saying you would use a different method for the basket weave, can you share what you have in mind?
Flowers took me longer than i planned, I just need to make a whole lot more flowers to get faster :)
The lid is styrofoam that is covered with gum paste (let dry), then covered with fondant on top and sides.
My customer turned out unexpectedly generous for sure! He is my former sports chiropractor, so lord knows, I have paid A LOT for his service over the years.. but still, a very nice gesture :)
You say at less than $6 a serving, it's low for a sculpted cake. What would *you* charge? and would you include the flowers into your per service price or add that on?
Quote:
Gorgeous Cake!!! Your price is right on. I would have charged $240 for the actual cake and another hundred for all the flowers then the delivery so you did well. And everything is so pristine and well done.
HI Denise! thank you for the kind words. Are you basing the $240 on 40 servings or 62? I see a lot of people say they measure cake slices as 1X2, not 1.5X2.
Quote:
I think that cake is amazing! I agree with adding up your supplies and figuring in time. With time, figure an hourly wage that is equal to your talent. What you are doing with sugar there is something not every decorator can do. You can price up for that. I've recently figured out I'm undercharging. I was doing cakes for $50-60 that took me 5-10 hours. Sometimes I was just breaking even on supplies! I think the price you charged was perfect for such a highly decorated cake.
thank you! You are definitely undercharging. I don't see how it would even pay for your ingredients, if it's a specialized cake with luster dusts, etc..
A
Original message sent by Lyoshka
thank you! You are definitely undercharging. I don't see how it would even pay for your ingredients, if it's a specialized cake with luster dusts, etc..
Yep. I made the mistake of trying to compete with grocery stores. Impossible. Def working on bringing up my price point. It's hard to find customers who understand the value of a custom cake.
AI'm most definately not seeing a sculpted cake here.
I see a square cake, a round cake, lots of flowers, and a lid.
K8 - you're the one who claims the sculpture - do you see something I don't?
I wouldn't say it is a sculpted cake but i would say that it more than worthy of $450 (I think that's about GBP300 right now?). While it's hard to see the exact finish and tinsey details on there, from the photos I can see, that cake would not look out of place in the competitions I have been to here in the UK. It is stunning. x
Quote:
I'm most definately not seeing a sculpted cake here.
I see a square cake, a round cake, lots of flowers, and a lid.
K8 - you're the one who claims the sculpture - do you see something I don't?
Jedi Knight, I agree with you, I wouldn't treat it as a sculpted cake, since I didn't sculpt anything (though my discovery of that basket weave qualified by the time I spent on it teehee). I treated it as a cake with two tiers with time-consuming decorations. The flowers (hydrangeas) were new to me, so took longer because I was leaning them, but now would go much, much faster.
Quote:
I wouldn't say it is a sculpted cake but i would say that it more than worthy of $450 (I think that's about GBP300 right now?). While it's hard to see the exact finish and tinsey details on there, from the photos I can see, that cake would not look out of place in the competitions I have been to here in the UK. It is stunning. x
Snowflake, thank you so very much for your compliment! It's heartwarming to think somebody on CC loves my work. I'm not a professional baker and it's always been a hobby of mine, i just recently started looking into making it an actual business. So it's great to see people think my skillz don't suck :)
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%