1st cake commission

Your cake is lovely! What might happen if you continue this as a hobby, is that people will be lining up at your door to order beautiful, inexpensive cakes! I have a couple small tips for you…. make sure you do cover your expenses plus some for your time, and….always tell the client the price of the cake upfront. By giving a price up front, you won’t have that squeamish feeling when they ask you how much?

Hi Sharon, thanks for your reply and your advice! I’ll take it into consideration next time it happens, if so!

Check out the Cake Business blog here on CD. Read it as it’s a very good article on pricing cakes.

Hi jchuck, thanks for your reply too. I have already read the blog here, and I agree it’s a good article for businesses. I guess it’s just my situation that is special, and I would like to hear what people have to say for a specific first commission like mine. In any way, I guess that if I ever have another order in the future I will try to be a bit more strict with the pricing and not think of what my friends might say. It’s always difficult doing something like this for someone you know.

Domnaki
I use to sell cakes part time when I was working. I retired 3 year ago, and decided to keep it strictly a hobby. Wanted freedom and no stress in my retirement.
What I use to do is keep a note of the specific time I started and finished all my decorating tasks ( the hours ) …my baking, torting, crumb coating & covering my cakes….making embellishments like flowers, molds, figures etc. Anything & everything related to the cake. Tallied price of my supplies….butter, eggs, flour…etc. Tallied my physical labour costs. Wrote this all down. Of course the more you decorate, the faster you’ll get…so will eventually reflect in your price. I also discreetly emailed/phoned bakeries in my area…..actual store fronts and online for a quote of the actual cake I was making. This was very helpful, and of course I got a range of prices. But I took this in consideration with my experience at the time. Wasn’t a 100% newbie, but not an accomplished pro either. With all this info, I figured a fair price. You probably have a rough idea how long it took to make this cake from start to finish. I would either meet the client one on one, or deal through email. Get the details. Then would get back to them with a quote. Quote was firm. I sometimes did give a % off to only close friends….and they kept that info to themselves. That was my choice. Got % down on order..the rest paid in full before delivering. I agree with Sharon ….it is difficult to quote a price…but you need to decide your cakes and you, are worth it. Otherwise you will be making them for nothing. And it will get harder and harder to get paid what you deserve. You don’t want to be taken advantage of. Then everyone will expect a well decorated cake for a cheap price. Where I live I probably could have charged $150-200 for that cake. Not sure in your area of Barcelona.

Jchuck thanks a lot again for your extended reply and all the information you provided me with. I will definitely take your feedback into consideration and like you said perhaps I should contact a couple of local stores and ask them (I was scared it could be a little bit awkward to do so but perhaps I should try it). As for the discount for close friends, I have already asked the last one to keep the price to himself because he was ready to advertise it to everyone, and like you said I want to keep this as a hobby and not let it become a hectic experience for me, otherwise I’ll just drop it. In any case, I’m very thankful for the time you took in explaining all this to me, and I’ll keep everything in mind :) keep up the good work with your cakes!