To price a serving of wedding cake you add up its full cost first: the flour, butter, eggs and buttercream for every tier by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the boards, dowels and box, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one serving costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a three-tier buttercream cake for 100 that costs $4.62 to make, a 45% margin after 3% fees means $8.88, rounded up to $9.00. The hours are the cost: baking, leveling, filling, stacking and decorating a three-tier cake takes about 15, and they're why wedding cake is priced by the serving. Cakes booked through a venue at a set price need checking the same way. In the example below, a Denver cake studio prices a three-tier cake for 100 guests.
The short version
- Full cost = ingredients a serving + your time + boards, dowels and box + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Price by the serving, from the whole cake's cost.
- Charge delivery and setup separately; they're time and miles.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each serving from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a serving's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Ingredients | The batch's cost ÷ servings a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ servings × your hourly rate |
| Boards, dowels and box | Per serving |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the servings you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
Pricing other cakes is in how to price cakes, and what a cake business looks like over a year in cake business plan.
An example: a three-tier cake for 100
Blue Spruce Cake Studio, a made-up cake studio in Denver, Colorado, builds a three-tier vanilla buttercream cake for 100 servings:
| Ingredient | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 8 lb | $4.80 |
| Sugar | 8 lb | $6.40 |
| Butter | 10 lb | $45.00 |
| Eggs | 48 | $14.40 |
| Buttermilk and cream | $8.00 | |
| Powdered sugar for buttercream | 10 lb | $12.00 |
| Vanilla and flavors | $6.00 | |
| A batch | $96.60 |
| A serving | Cost |
|---|---|
| Ingredients, $96.60 ÷ 100 | $0.97 |
| Time, 900 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 100 | $3.00 |
| Boards, dowels and box | $0.25 |
| Overhead | $0.40 |
| Full cost | $4.62 |
At a 45% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $4.62 ÷ 0.52 = $8.88, so $9.00. At $9.00 a serving, the cake comes to $900, and each serving leaves $4.11. It had been quoting $7, which leaves $2.17, and moved to $9. A venue asked for a package price of $6.50 a serving, which leaves $1.69. Delivery and setup, 50 miles and two hours, are a separate $150 line on the quote. How to count your hours in the cost is in how to compute labor cost in baking.
Get the calculator
Download the wedding cake price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the servings it makes, the hands-on minutes, the boards and dowels and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices a serving on paper. A June with butter up a dollar and three cakes the same weekend changes what each cake really cost, and how many hours went into it.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each serving from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each serving is a recipe, with unit conversion from the case or sack to the gram.
True cost from the batch. Each batch takes ingredients at their real cost, from the deliveries they came from, so a price rise shows up in the next batch.
Price creep. A price-creep report per supplier shows which ingredient is quietly costing more.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| What a serving costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Buttercream left over | Not counted | Waste with a reason |
| An ingredient creeping up | Noticed at tax time | A price-creep report |
| Whether wholesale still pays | A guess | Margins on real cost |
Recipes, batches and true cost are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.