Pricing for gum paste flowers

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Permalink Reply by shuswapcakes on January 5, 2012 at 2:32pm

Wow!  That's a beautiful cake!  I know the price can vary quite a bit for gumpaste/sugar flowers.   Most people I know charge per flower and the lady who does flowers across town charges around $3 per rose (medium size) and $3.5 for her 4" roses (EACH!)  Some people also charge per dozen.  It depends on the flower too, some are much harder to mak than others.  Some people charge per "cascade", like a full side cascade would be around $250 - $300.  There are so many factors involved (eep!)  I only know because I looked into this myself because I wanted to make my own flowers but never got around to it.   Flowers are hard to make and can be very time consuming so cheat yourself on the price!  Hope this helps a bit :)

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Permalink Reply by Lynne Salmon on January 5, 2012 at 4:37pm

Search around as to how much it would cost to buy them and charge accordingly. 

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Permalink Reply by June Kowalczyk on January 5, 2012 at 5:40pm

My mother was a professional dressmaker, and when she started a dress, she made a note of the time she started. From start to finish. When she took a break for lunch/coffee, she took note. The rub is how much $$ per hour to charge. Obviously, the more simple the flower, the less time it takes. I agree with Lynne above, you have to look around. I have checked other decorators around here to get a rough idea. It also depends if you are a pro, or a hobby baker like me. I may not charge the same as a pro who has their own shop, but your time is valuable, so you have to charge for time & ingredients to make the flowers.

Good luck.

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Permalink Reply by Melanie on January 5, 2012 at 9:57pm

Thanks everyone! You've helped quite a bit. I did check around my area and the prices I've gathered are between $5-$10 each flower depending on the flower. I thought that was too much at first but after breaking it down, each full bloom rose takes about 1 hour to make if you vein every petal and curl in the edges of each petals where as the simpler flowers take anywhere from 10-30 minutes. I'll have to do some more digging and see what I come up with. Thanks again! 

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Permalink Reply by Sandra I. Vazquez Lossiseroni on January 5, 2012 at 10:50pm

This cake is a beautiful cake, and the flowers are stunning. My suggestion to you is to search the websites that sells them to you for your cakes and charge about the same price for them. Even though you would spend hours making them, to the flowers crafters might take only 20 min. I love to do the flowers myself, but when pressing for time, I buy them, reorganize them, paint them, and I can add some of my own.

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Permalink Reply by April Vuylsteke on January 6, 2012 at 4:12pm

I used to price by the flower, but found brides would want to pay for only a few extra flowers, not really enough to look great, so I started pricing in a different way.  I add an extra $0.25 per serving for a gumpaste flower topper (example $0.25 * 150 serving cake = $37.50), small clusters of floral groupings add an extra $0.50 per serving and a full cascade would add $1.00 serving.  It works for me.

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Permalink Reply by Melanie on January 6, 2012 at 8:52pm

Thank you Sandra and April, never thought of approaching it in those ways. Sandra, do you know of any websites off hand that sell them? April, that's a good way to price them. I'll play with that a little bit. I know with the cake above, I priced them at $3 a flower but had to itemize the number of flowers and didn't really like the fact that I had to stick with a certain number so I like the idea of just adding a certain cost per serving. Thanks for the idea!

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Permalink Reply by Sue Shepherd on January 6, 2012 at 10:31pm

I'd like to start by saying that your cake is simple lovely!  I tend to charge by 'sprays'.  It really does depend on the difficulty of the flowers I make in my bakery.  As an example, Peonies are by far more difficult and time consuming than making Calla Lillies.  I would charge $25.00 for a small Calli Lilli spray (something that would fit on the top of your cake here).  I would charge at least $45.00 for the same sized Peony spray.  For the quantity of flowers on your cake pictured, I'd probably charge @ $150.00 because the callis and the roses are fairly easy to make with minimal amount of time required for these.  I only see a few carnations (which are obviously more time consuming).  This price would go up if my flowers were more time consuming.  Another aspect of the lower cost ($150) is that these do not appear to be color dusted- which adds time to the project as well as material.  All gumpaste flowers need time and attention to make life-like. I am always making them in various varieties and colors so I have some to draw from in a pinch. 

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