Cake pricing calculator

Price a cake so your time is paid and there is profit left over. Enter the ingredient cost, your hours and the extras; you get the full cost, the cake price at your margin and the price per slice. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

Ingredients total ($) Hours of work Hourly rate ($) Decoration ($) Box + board ($) Overhead ($) Target margin % Slices

Overhead is your share of power, gas, cleaning and similar costs for this cake. Price = total cost ÷ (1 − margin).

Not sure what the ingredients really cost? The Recipe Cost Workbook keeps one ingredient price list for every recipe, handles kg/g, l/ml and dozen, and adds labor, packaging and overhead. $12, instant .xlsx download. Taking custom orders? The Bakery Order Tracker ($9) tracks orders, deposits, balances and what to bake each day.

How it works

Total cost = ingredients + hours × hourly rate + decoration + box + overhead. Cake price = total cost ÷ (1 − margin). Price per slice = cake price ÷ slices.

Worked example (the values above): labor is 3 × $20 = $60. Total cost is $18 + $60 + $8 + $3 + $5 = $94. At a 30% margin the cake is $94 ÷ 0.70 = $134.29, and cut into 16 slices that is $8.39 a slice.

Because your hours are already in the cost, the margin is profit on top of your wage, not your wage. To cost the ingredients line by line, use the free recipe cost calculator, or read how to price baked goods.