How to price your cupcakes with confidence and make {more} profits in 60 days!

How much to charge for cupcakes | Cupcake Pricing | Angel Foods | Cake Business School

The absolute biggest challenge in the cake decorating community is how to price their products. (This is actually true in any business or industry!)

Pricing your cupcakes, with confidence is the difference between setting yourself up as a successful cupcake company or as a hobby business making little profit.

Get your free Cupcake Pricing Guide PDF here.

Previously we have talked about how to price cakes and what to charge for 3D, larger, sculptured cakes, because there is nothing worse than undercharging or overcharging!

Top 8 Mistakes Made by Business Owners

Unidentified Skills {you are awesome and don’t yet realize it}
Identify your True Customers {who is your target market?}
Lack of Support{peeps need help!}
How to Price Products and Services
The time it takes to Create
Confidence to talk to Customers
Encouraging customers to Return {hello, great customer service}
Marketing {yep, that whole marketingthing again}

The Number 1 reason people undercharge for their products is a lack of confidence.

People tell me over and over, how they ‘’couldn’t possibly charge that for their cupcakes, I don’t have any qualifications, I’m not professional and think people won’t pay. I am just doing this as a hobby, anyway, so it doesn’t matter.’’

Get cupcake pricing right the first time, with a free Cupcake Pricing Guide PDF. Click here to grab a copy.

Your time, energy and family do matter!

When you set out to sell some cupcakes, what are you REALLY putting into them?

Ingredients
Packaging
Researching decorating tips on YouTube
Investing in new cutters, tools, equipment
Electricity
Decorating Skill and Technique
Phone calls, texts, internet time to confirm details
Cleaning up
Investment in Food License, ABN, Insurance and more
Delivering, as well as car wear and tear
Your Time

This all adds up and this all does matter!

YOUR TIME is the biggest cost of producing a cupcake. Your time is valuable.

Grocery shopping
Researching YouTube
Weighing ingredients
Baking
Cleaning kitchen
Decorating
Delivery
Collection
Setting up a Cupcake Stand on delivery
Not to mention consultation with the customer – email inquiry, replying, messaging, phone conversations, confirming deposit and final payment.

All of the above can add up very quickly!

This is the BIG question to ask yourself…. How much do you want to earn per hour?

Are you hoping for $25 per hour? What if you end up earning less than $10 per hour? Think about it.

Why do You Need To Price Effectively?

… To beat your competitors

… Be more professional

… Get more customers

… Make more money

… Better quality of life for you and your family

… For good profit

We discuss and teach about how to price in Cake Business School‘s training module: How to Price Cakes, For Maximum Profit, With Confidence. From charging for profit (including pricing guides, cause you guys love them!) to looking at the future goals of your business. If you want to save for a house, we are going to make that shit happen.

HOW to MAKE MONEY for your future big dreams.
What courses, products or CAKE-Y stuff you can SELL, to bring in more money
Includes Pricing Guide

Enroll in Cake Business School here.

3 Types of Pricing

Portfolio– this is set prices for set products. If you think about your local bakery or cake store, they have an album you can look through, which have photos of cakes, for set prices.
Mix & Match– where the customer can choose different decorations and styles. From your photo’s and products, the customer can choose flavour, colour, styles, decorations and themes of what you can already do, and a custom order and quote is produced.
Custom Design– a complete ‘’1 off’’ order, which you haven’t done before, done completely to the customer’s specifications.

The Easiest, Quickest Way to Price Your Cupcakes – Pricing Guide

Most guides tell you to –

Add up ingredients + packaging,

+ add a percentage for your investment

+ add overheads

+ amount of time

/ divide by the number of cupcakes

= price per cupcake

You can do it that way, but I find it can be quite time-consuming doing this, and not entirely accurate.

Grab the Cupcake Pricing Guide here.

Basic Cupcake Flavors Include – Vanilla Cake, Lemon, Dark Chocolate Mud Cake, Apple & Cinnamon, Jaffa, Choc Mint, Banana, Carrot, Red Velvet.

Deluxe Cupcake Flavors Include – Ferreo Rocher, Pineapple & Coconut, Caramel, Rainbow, Lime & Poppy seed, Mocha, Coconut Ice, Hummingbird.

Extravagant Flavors Include – Strawberries & Champagne, Chocolate Hazelnut Mud, Butterscotch Schnapps, White Chocolate & Raspberries, Mojito, Tiramisu.

What Can Change Your Pricings

The above guide is a fantastic starting point, but is no means a hard and fast rule. There are many different factors which can alter a quote.

Where you live can affect what customers are willing to pay or are happy to pay. From a mining community with a higher than average income, to a small country farming community, they are two different ends of the scale.
The quantity of cupcakes someone orders. If someone orders 200 cupcakes, then the general rule of business is to offer them a discount on a bulk order. (So, you might make them $0.50 cheaper, or add up the total and take $30 off, or offer free delivery.)
Take into consideration what your delivery arrangements Are you offering delivery? Are you charging an additional charge for delivery, on top of your quote? For example, if you receive an order for 30 minutes drive away, look at adding that cost to your quote.
Set a minimum order per flavor, to discourage time consuming fiddly orders. The customer might order 12 cupcakes with 6 different flavors. Is that going to be the same price? Considering it would take 6 times longer, the customer would need to pay for the time. Look at either setting a minimum order per flavor, or a surcharge for multiple flavors in 1 order.
Custom orders that require expensive tools and equipment or something ordered in, need to have the price added on to the order.
If fruits are in season or out of season. If you have an order for chocolate dipped strawberry cupcakes, which you have to drive to 3 shops to find and buy twice the amount because there will be a lot of bruised ones, then this needs to be factored into a quote.
As you invest in tools, equipment and in yourself (courses), there needs to be an increase in the cost to customers at the same time. I mean, should you absorb the cost of equipment (or specialized tools) yourself or should you add on to the customer? You do need to add a cost on to the customer, as you need to recover the cost, when it needs to be replaced.

The Top 3 ‘Must Do’s’ To Remember So, You Are Making More Money, Quicker!

KNOW YOUR WORTH

Your time, energy, skills and effort are all valuable.

Ask for a deposit

It is normal practice to ask for a minimum 50% deposit on orders. This is to guarantee your availability for that date and also guarantees the customers invested interest to not cancel on you.

Trust me on this, as you will be surprised at how many people will cancel or change their plans without telling you. This is because they haven’t put any value into your time, for consultation, refusing other bookings, etc as no money has passed hands. It is your choice whether the deposit is refundable, and at what stage. (Usually 25% back at 4 weeks cancellation, no money back at 2 weeks cancellation.)

Don’t allow customers to decide your prices.

Customers (may) bully to get what they want. They might turn around and say ‘’I’m not paying that’’. Know your boundaries. If you aren’t willing to work for less than $10 per hour, tell them (nicely).