Cakes too cheap at school fair?

[Clary]

It was our school fair this afternoon; I went to help as requested on refreshments, carrying cakes I had made (big chocolate cupcakes topped with chocolate buttercream).

Got there only to see a notice advertising cakes on sale at 20p. Surely that's ridiculous? It wouldn't have covered the cost of the ingredients in the cakes I made. Now I know people donate the cakes, but surely no-one objects to paying 50p a cake at a school fair, do they, even if it's just for a glace-iced bun?

The cost of ingredients has risen hugely in the last couple of years (a dozen eggs is £3 up from £2 a year or two ago, the butter I use is now £1.40 where it was 90p two years ago, etc) and don't PTAs need to bear that in mind? Or AIBU?

(BTW I am on the PTA and will be putting some of this to the chair).

The one that drove me demented was finding that the bottle tombola was five tickets for a pound with a one in five chance of winning, and we'd all donated decent bottles which were being snapped up for effectively £1 each. Huge queues and sold out in under 20 minutes! Hence insisting that some Lidl cheapo fizzy pops were including in future when I got on the committee. It still always sells out but now makes nearly as much money as the raffle (about £400) instead of the £50 it was making before.

I got 15 free range eggs at the co-op for £2.50, I tend to buy fairtrade sugar etc, but use margarine for cakes not butter, and I have a Mary Berry carrot cake recipe that uses sunflower oil - but really if you are not happy then you shouldn't do it, or just donate less, our school gave out paper plates to children this year, asking them to bring it back with cakes for the fair, the response was amazing, if you spread the burden maybe you won't feel so upset? Or donate the money you spend on ingredients? It saves you a lot of trouble!

We try to price everything at our fair in a way that means people can afford to feed the family(butcher's burgers were £1.50) and get their dc's faces painted/ bouncy castle etc. If you have three children at the school all wanting cakes, burgers, faces painted etc it mounts up very quickly.

at our school they charge 20p I have 3 children in the school they get £2to buy cakes with (so we get 10). if the cakes were 50 i would hand them 50 p each to buy a cake getting 3 and the school would get £0.50 less. simply because i am well able to bake a cupcake/fairy cake and if i am spending £1/50 on something I have no clue whom made and for all I know could just be cheap bought ones with a load of icing on them

I would be ok spending 30 on each but for 50 I wouldnt be quite so forth coming I would rather make something wuth them at home then

YANBU. Cost of ingredients is irrelevant, it's just annoying to see the school making paltry profits.

There was a cake stall at pre-school last week - bought 3 delicious slices of carrot cake for a quid (would have bought more if I'd known how nice it was but it looked plain and was all that was left) which was actually priced at 20p a slice but I felt bad about turning up with my own donation (shop-bought scones) too late to donate . Would cheerfully have paid 50p a slice.

Higher profits = fewer events = easier all round, surely? (We are being hit with a lot of requests for things for fundraising at the moment, would be a lot easier jsut to had over a fiver )

I agree completely Clary.
Did the PTA cake stall recently and was told to charge 25p per item. Loads of people come to the coffee mornings every week with a tupperware box to fill with cakes, because they're cheaper and much nicer than shop-bought ones!

The PTA were thrilled with the ££ made on the stall. But I just thought, what a waste of time and effort.

I made 3 dozen muffins for the sale, which would have sold for £12. I'd have much rather had my Friday evening back and the cost of the ingredients and given the PTA the cash direct.

I think this is where PTA's are out of touch tbh.

Some people are happy to give up loads of time to doing something, which is relatively inefficient in terms of cash-raising.
But loads of parents are not "unsupportive", they just don't see the point. and would rather hand over £10 and keep their free time.

Oh no...I worked the cake stall the other week. We were given a selection of laminated price tags and given freedom to pick the prices. I found it difficult for exactly the reasons you state. I was scared of insulting the bakers and scared of overpricing and ending up with a million unsold cakes. Who would have thought it would be such a minefield! As it was, I didn't do the closing half hour and there were a few cakes left that were dropped down to 10 pence to clear.

I made something but I didn't bother to price it out to see if what I put on it was a 'profit making' amount per slice.
I hope none of our bakers are on this thread!!!

I ran the cake stall at ds's school fete and we sold individual cakes for 20p and large cakes for £2 large, £1 small. I made a lot of cakes myself and didnt even consider how much the cakes had cost me to make, it was profit for the school, not me.

however, the cost of ingredients here are much lower. I got 30 eggs from asda for £3.30, SR flour is 52p and stork is £2 for a large tub.

ps, we still made over £100 on the stall.

Yes 20p is absolutely ridiculous. 50p is a lot better.....BUT when it's all for a good cause people would probably pay more than that.

We've had a couple of cake sales at work....and people will generally put in a £1.00 for a cake....and rightly so. The cakes I've made have included free range eggs, real butter, sometimes mascarpone, good chocolate....20p would be an absolute insult!
And we never have cakes left over!

Definitely raise the issue with the chair!

didnt even consider how much the cakes had cost me to make, it was profit for the school, not me

But lizzie, think how much more profit you could have made if the cakes had been sold for a higher price.
Our work sales were firstly for the Brisbane floods and then for the Red Cross Japanese Tsunami.

We did really well....

We made £400 at our last cake stall.

At its not just about fundraising at the school fete BTW, its about having a community event that the children and hopefully the adults will enjoy.

God deliver us from PTAs

Who cares whether the cakes sell for 20p or 50p?

I'm imagining the teachers hiding in the staffroom to escape from the over-involved mummy who has a cob on about the price of cakes at the school fair

We sold ours at 25p each for cupcakes, they went but not hugely fast. I think had they been priced higher we would have struggle to sell them all. We priced bigger cakes individually with the max being £1.50.

Whilst the fayre was a fund raiser it was also a social for families, and we didn't want to exclude those on lower incomes or put them off from coming to our next event.

A very good amount Jolene!

The thing is that all the money isn't being raised for the pta Christmas piss up, its to help the school so the teachers do care actually. In the last 2 years we have bought for the school: a trim track, playground sail, outdoor classroom and done up the swimming pool. Funny how the parents who slag off the pta are quite happy to let their children use the things we've bought for the school.

I think it all depends on the demograph of your school.

Maybe charge £1 per cake in leafy Surrey, but 20p per cake in more cash strapped areas. There is no way I would pay £1 per cake.

I suppose the point is trying to raise a decent amount for the school, whilst creating a fun. community event. If I wanted posh cup cakes, I'd go to a posh cup cake shop. If I want to support the school, I'll take my chances on the tombola and just think of it as donating a bit of cash with a bit of icing round my chops.

at dd's school there are 44 pupils in the whole school. We often have a cake sale to up the funds and always charge 20p regardless of size, even a couple of nans made large victoria sponges and they too were sold for only 50p each. We always make at least £100 and have even made in excess of £200 on a couple of occasions. Its money to help the school and all the parents make cakes and also buy them as it is all for our kids.

Agreed that you can only charge what the socio-economic area will allow. In my sil's pta in a posh part of bristol they charge £1 a cupcake and £3 for face painting. But it also ludicrous if you are charging less for a homemade cake than you pay for a shop bought cake down the road.

But lizzie, think how much more profit you could have made if the cakes had been sold for a higher price.

But then I doubt they would have all sold. At the end we were selling for 30p for 2. The area we live in has a far more mixed demographic than anywhere I've lived before. Its a village school and some of the families are shockingly and intimidatingly wealthy. Next door to the school is a large council estate. I and the other woman manning the store didn't want to isolate any buyers.

20 - 30p sounds about right for baking at school fetes, it's the same round here.
Why make such expensively sourced cakes then if you're not happy with the price?
Just make normal buns instead of big show-off cupcakes swirled in buttercream etc..

Just read all the other replies and Beertricks on the first page said exactly what I meant but much more coherently (well it is early morning that's my excuse.)

But it's basic economics
Surely if the point is to raise money and the baker spent more on the ingredients than the resultant cakes make then it would ahve been better off if they hadn't bothered and just donated the cost of the ingredients?

of course if there is some other agenda than fundraising then maybe not, but these things are usually fundraisers

Well I'm glad I read this as, as a burning issue of the day, it's been worrying me

TBH you sound like a bit of a show off and need something more to accupy your time :o