Five ways to price a custom cake fairly

Pricing a custom cake is where a lot of bakers quietly lose money. You know the feeling — you quote a number, the customer says "lovely", and an hour into decorating you realise you forgot to count the 90 minutes of piping.

Here's a framework that takes five minutes.

1. Start with bake cost, not intuition

Your bake cost is the sum of ingredients at current prices, in the quantities the recipe actually uses. Not the pre-inflation price. Not the pack size. Not "about £4". The actual number.

Bakerly's bake-cost calculator reads ingredient prices from your catalogue, so you only set a price once per ingredient and recipes reprice themselves.

2. Add labour at a realistic rate

Pick an hourly rate you'd pay a good friend to help you. That's your labour rate. Multiply by the honest time — mixing + baking + decorating + cleanup. Round up, not down.

3. Add overheads per cake

Utilities, packaging, card fees, rent. Add them up monthly, divide by the number of cakes you did last month. That's your per-cake overhead. It is never zero.

4. Apply a margin

Bake cost + labour + overheads gives you your cost. A healthy bakery margin is 40 to 60 percent on top. Under 30 percent and you're working for free on a bad week.

5. Check it against the market — and hold firm

Look up three comparable cakes in your area. If you're 20 percent above, your photography and story need to justify it. If you're 20 percent below, raise your price — you are leaving money on the table and attracting price shoppers.

The "fair" price is the one you can repeat a thousand times without resenting it. That's the whole job.