My wife made these cakes for my son’s first birthday, and was contacted by someone asking if she would make her the same one on commission. She’s never sold a cake before and doesn’t exactly know what to charge for her current skill level.
First image is a 6” 2 layer vanilla cake with buttercream frosting. Second picture is a single layer 6” chocolate cake as the head of the caterpillar with 14 vanilla cupcakes as the body.
Thank you for any help/advice!
by Creep_Sandwich
12 Comments
Here’s my pricing sheet. Maybe it will help. This is the STARTING price. So I add more for decor and time. My cakes are 4 layers. I suggest pricing out materials and then looking into profit, overhead, etc.
https://preview.redd.it/un3cnb45a2ce1.jpeg?width=1320&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=984fe6f755d09af7a8dbbb4fea1fb5e9d48d1626
It’s hard to say when we don’t know where you are, cakes in NYC are higher than a small town somewhere. I’d suggest calling bakeries around you to get an idea of how they price cakes.
I would charge $30 per cake. They’re not as refined as more professional cakes are, but $30 would more than cover the ingredients of each cake; however, she can practice her decorating skills if in the future she wishes to do more commission work and, as a result, charge more.
I dont know which cake she has been asked to commission. But I love them both!! As a customer I would pay more for the cupcake cake, as its less fondant.
She’s talented!
Depends on where you are. In my area, a very polished cake with basic flavors in picture one would go for about $100. The cake / cupcake combo in picture 2 would probably be about the same given the figurine on the first cake.
This is very cute, but your wife needs a bit more practice before she can charge top prices. In my area, she could probably sell these as-is for about $50-$70 each.
Again, these are very cute, and I think she just needs to practice a bit more with piping and fondant to be able to sell at a much higher price point. The precision really does make all the difference.
In RI the place I work at would charge $70-90
I remember seeing somewhere for beginning home bakers that you should charge for the cost of ingredients + 15-20%
Try cake cost! You plug in all your ingredients and location and it helps guesstimate what you should charge
These are super cute. I hope she knows how talented she is. I’d definitely purchase a cake from her for an event.
I still have my copy of that book from the 70s.
I think you’ve already gotten some great pricing advice, so I’ll just add that I think your wife has some amazing talent. I hope she keeps up with baking because it looks like she has a great eye for detail and design!