How much for a slice of cake for school funds?

We sell cans and bottled water for £1, crisps for 50p, little cupcakes for 20p, bigger cakes 50p or £1, across all our events through the year. We never go over a pound for anything, including a strip of raffle tickets. The only thing that is over a pound is tickets to the Halloween disco which I think this year were £3 which included a disco squash some crisps and a popcorn cone to go home. At Christmas we do a Santa’s grotto as part of the school fair and tickets to see Santa at £3 and they get a selection box the school really go to town on the grotto. It’s absolutely amazing.

Theres a psychology to cake sales. You need to know your audience as expectations vary. Go to cheap people berate you (especially if they've made a fancy cake). Go too expensive nothing sells.

We are in Yorkshire. (And not a posh part). We do £2 for a fancy cake, £1 for simple cake (like a fairy cake with coloured icing) and 50p for smaller stuff. Its in clearly defined sections. (Plus a section of bought individually wrapped allergen friendly cakes).

Tea, coffee, bottled drinks, cans all £1

As for card payments... they are just too slow and take too much of a cut.

£1-£1.50 for the cake, £1.50 for tea and a big bucket for donations (so people can pay more or put change in).

In my experience this raises far more than the extra you might get from over pricing the cake.

It’s too much. At our school, cakes are 50p - £1 and tea would be £1 max.

It’s about not excluding people, whilst raising money.

At our school if we sold everything at such low prices then there would be huge queues, everything would sell within 10 minutes, and people would complain to the volunteers about both of the above, which would mean they’d be less likely to want to help out again.

They still sell them!

If the goal is to sell everything and make a profit then prices are too high in my opinion. 30p squash maximum, tea 50p and cake a pound

Forgot to say even if there is a lot raised one year it goes very quickly if there is a big purchase to fund. Our PTA are saving up for a new path from the classrooms to the playground. I expect it’ll be £5k at least. At one point the PTA were giving each class teacher a set amount each month to buy glue sticks etc, that may still happen in some schools. They also make a significant contribution to some school trips. People think the government funds everything but that’s not reality.

YANBU our PTFA make £8k each Christmas and summer fair (400 kids in the school) from the stuff we all take in and then buy back. The PTFA hang around to make sure we're not giving any discounts or freebies, I'll be honest if a kid has 20p and a cute face I'll sneak them a cake. They have 5 figures in the account so it's not going to be spent on the kids before they leave. I think we've lost sight of the point

Hot drinks £1
cake £2
squash 30p
little cakes/cookies £1/£1.50

£5 per family seems very cheap!

I paid £9.00 for two small pieces of cake and two teas at a similar event recently. The customers need to be able to pay by card as well.

I think it’s more than fair, all those things cost more out and about.

50p for little cakes, £1 for big, fire sale at the end to get rid. It's tricky to be making much real profit over what anything is bought for from supermarkets.

Our local ice cream van gives a percentage of takings, which is a win all round; no volunteers, good quality, no price haggling nor leftovers. We should arrange one of the local coffee vans too, that's a great idea.

It's too much l agree OP

Omg I used to love that Jamaican ginger loaf!!! And there was a banana one?! Lol heaven!!

I would do £1 for tea and coffee and 50p for a home baked cupcake/cookie and £1/£1.50 for a slice of cake depending on size/quality

£2 for tea is too much but everything else sounds reasonable these days.

I volunteer a lot for our school’s cake and ice cream sales. We have moved away from charging anything different than £1 or £2 because charging in 50p increments is tricky if people don’t have the right change, and there isn’t always a float. Volunteers are not that easy to come by at the moment so everything needs to be made as easy as possible otherwise they might not want to volunteer again.

There are still costs to consider even if people are donating cakes. There is a card machine now and that has to be paid for.

Ha! I worked out it costs £6.50 to make an 8" Victoria sponge with filling. That doesn't include your costs of power and water or your time and energy. I price an hour of volunteer time at £10. We usually get a return of £5 for every hour of volunteer time. If you don't value the time and input of what you are given you lose your donators and your donations.

It depends entirely on your demographics as to what you should do. We shifted almost everything from our decorated cake competition because although we put the prices up we also made sure people got value for money. We were not mean with slices and we used proper portable boxes and gave forks and napkins. Our parents were quite happy to pay £10 for four large slices of iced and filled cake. Likewise they will drop £3.50 on a decent fresh coffee but will not say thank you for a mug of Nescafé. Our job as a PTA is to fundraise and create community events, others may have different aims because because their community have different needs. When I brought in home made gingerbread to sell for 50p at the fireworks night it was an economic disaster and a waste of vunteer time. We did not have many parents wanting to treat their children to a 50p biscuit. The sweets van still did a roaring trade though.

We don't have daytime volunteers for things like sports day so we get coffee vans in now. We make as much from their donation as if we sold a gazillion cups of tea for 50p.

Our PTA charges 20p for squash, 80p for tea/ coffee. Cake is priced between 50p and £1.50 depending on size. Little fairy cakes/ krispie cakes/ biscuits are usually 50p, slices are usually £1.00-1.50. Brownies and tray bakes are usually between 80p and £1.00. I usually get asked by the chair to make a selection of small soft gingerbread and plain sugar biscuits in farm animal shapes (about 5cm across) that we sell as "toddler biscuits" for 20p and always go down a storm for the preschoolers, toddlers and older babies that are usually tagging along with their older siblings to these events. One year we did strawberries with whipped cream in little cups for 80p and they went down well.

We usually sell out or have very little left. As a PTA we've found we raise more by keeping things cheaper as people buy more - drinks and cakes instead of just a drink or just a cake.

School fetes will have a cross section of parents including some who are on low incomes and could only dream of spending £10 on coffee and cake. They will likely still want to support the event, and it's better if the pricing is pitched at a level that allows everyone to participate.

It's about 5 years since I was last doing this kind of thing, we'd have priced at £1 per tea/coffee, £1 for general cake, 50p for squash and 50p for top hats/crispie buns etc as those were mostly bought by the kids. If someone donated something out of the ordinary like very fancy cupcakes, we'd have priced those separately or maybe put them in the raffle. You definitely are more likely to get rid of more of your stick if you keep the prices low. Better off parents will often throw in extra or tell you to keep the change anyway.

£2 for a proper decent wedge of layered cake or £1.50 if it's not very big, also £1.50 for a cupcake or a slice of loaf cake, £1 for a cookie.

I did a similar stint at the summer fair one year. The more expensive cake slices didn't sell. We ended up heavily discounting and then selling everything off at the end for £1 a plateful. A lot of the sale go to the dcs who are given a small amount of pocket money for the fair and have to budget carefully.

£1 for tea/coffee. 50p for squash, 50p to £1 for most cakes, £2 for a really really massive slice of something especially delicious looking that was homemade. That will clear the stall.

This is one of the issues I see with the higher prices.

It depends on the area & the school obviously how much of an issue this would be but taking my nephews school as an example, there are lots of parents there who spend £10-15 on a coffee and a sandwich on their drive into work every day so paying these prices wouldn’t bother them at all, but there are also lots of parents for whom £10 is a good chunk of the weekly food shop budget and so paying £6 for 2 cakes and 2 squashes would be a huge amount.