re: Cake Pricing

Hi Faye! We will always have people blown away by our prices. They figure it might be a few bucks more than a grocery store cake, if that was the case than no one would get a grocery store cake lol. I charge the same amount as my local cake decorators, no more no less, it has made life easier, but no way I would charge the same as a grocery store! Cakesonthelane is right you shouldn’t need to defend your prices but I’m one of those people even though I know I shouldn’t need to I do like to be able to explain to a customer why only if they seem completely shocked. Here is basically how I do my cake orders

I prefer to do all my cake orders via email, even when they call I still send emails.
When someone emails me about a cake I ask for dates, what flavors they want, the theme they are looking to go with and how many people they need to feed so I can start pricing it out when they get back to me with more info. I get alot of “I need a cake in May think you can do it?” messages. Once I have a idea of servings sizes I send them some cake options, cake sizes they need to be close to their number of guests and the next size down just for another option, let them know the prices for those two cake options and I also tell them my base price for fondant per serving and buttercream per serving and let them know depending on the design detail and fillings it will cost more.

Either they are ok with it or tell me they got a budget of $. Than I let them know what I can do for their budget, I do own mini pans just for this reason, alot of people want tiered cakes but have tiny budgets so I picked up some mini cake pans to do smaller tiered cakes.

Sometimes you just need to explain if you want the business. The way I see it if they are really bothered by my prices I really dont want to do a cake for them. I dont like the stress of dealing with a customer who already is unhappy cause they think the prices are to much. I had a customer a few weeks back who wanted a chocolate cake with ganache and chocolate covered strawberries to feed 25 people. My quote was double what she was expecting to pay (without the chocolate covered strawberries) and she was blown away by the prices. I figured out she really knew nothing about cakes and that was the price she paided for the same grocery store cake in Flordia and we live in Kodiak Alaska were prices have to be higher. But after a little explaining a cake I was dreading to do turned into a cake order on my prices, she left happy and I felt happy to. She just didnt understand why and just needed me to tell her and she was happy. Sometimes no amount of explaining will help I can tell you this don’t negotiate prices, stay firm with your prices or you will regret it! This is why I do cake orders via email so I dont just blurt out a price or get a sob story about why this cake is so important. I’m planing on setting a minimum price for my cake orders and also coming up with a few cake size and designs for a set price. Something that isn’t hard to do, I make money off of and people know they can come to get and get this size cake and design for this price.