All of our bake shops in my town have closed

You would need to work out how much cake to cook and then cut and carve it. You cannot go on a price from what others charge. The cake may be bigger or smaller than the one you will bake. Find out the cost of the ingredients as well as all the sundry items – like box and boards – and as well value your time with a figure. If you can estimate how much the cake will take to bake and then ice – you can add all the prices together (not forgetting any misc. overheads like gas, electricity, petrol, parking etc) That is the only way to price a cake – and given the true cost of the cake – at least from that information, you can then decide how much you are willing to drop – if you really want the contract, but I do not believe that cake decorators should charge less for their creations, just to secure a contract, because this brings the expectations on cake price downwards by the general public. Hope that helps. Kx

Another thing to thing about… the demographic.
A town of 32,000 with no specialist cake shop surviving? Why?
It’s hard to change people’s views, on the value of a custom cake, if it is not the norm to spend significant dollars on a cake, where you live.
Not sayin’ it can’t be done… just be prepared.

I agree…before you put a lot of effort into something, you should find out why the other shops closed. If they weren’t making money because they couldn’t compete with Walmart that’s one thing, but if their leases just ran out and they wanted to do something different that’s a different story. If they say that the people in your area won’t pay for cakes