How much for a slice of cake for school funds?

[Tiredofwhataboutery]

Sports day tomorrow, as usual request for baking have been made. There’s generally quite a lot of donations and I volunteered at the Christmas school fair and there was a lot left over. Local businesses also donate cake shop and bakery etc which is nice if you worried about hygiene. It’s £2 for a slice (not huge ) £2 for tea £1 for squash £1 for smaller cookies etc. I just think it’s too expensive it used to be half the price. Do you think it’s too much or is it reasonable?

We do £1.50 for hot drinks and 50p for squash.
As the chair of my daughters school pta I can tell you they can never get it right.

charge a quid for a cuppa and people will chew your ear off that you don’t charge enough and you’ll never make decent money for the school, charge more and someone will have a moan that not everyone can afford it.

we’ve had people complain to other pta members that we shouldn’t be allowed to take the payments as we clearly undercharged (when we hadn’t it was just cheap) and then others call us elitist because we charged £30 for an adults only totally optional wreath making event.
it’s a balance between making decent money for minimal input when everyone is doing it as a volunteer on top of lots of other commitments and keeping it affordable and accessible for everyone.

The tea is way overpriced! Even our way overpriced local cafe sell a pot of tea for £1.85!

Cake price is ok. But some of them like the rice crispie cake things should be 50p

This was the reasoning our PTA chair gave for putting up the prices of (Nescafé instant) coffee and tea towards the end of my time at my kid’s primary school. I was frankly embarrassed on the tea stall telling people that it was £2 a cup.
Yes of course people pay £3.50 for a flat white and £3 for a nice cupcake at a coffee shop. But the PTA tea and cake stand is a very different beast!
£1 for instant coffee and tea. Cakes etc between 50p-£1.50 depending on how nice they actually are. Squash should be no more than 50p.

Our primary charge 50p for a cupcake/fairy bun/cookie. It used to be 25p until I said to them that they were selling them too cheaply!

The squash and tea is way too much. I’m assuming the tea isn’t fancy.

I run a bake sale during a music event twice a year. Full price up to and including the interval at similar prices to you, then half price at the end. People love taking home a slice for later and it still raises funds. For a sports day I'd do half price or 'donate what you can' during the final hour.

Cake fine but £2 for a tea seems a lot!

I think it’s OK, but if you are worried, I’d reduce the tea to £1.50, not the cake.

No it’s supermarket teabags and an urn of hot water add your own milk and sugar. There were tiny cups last time too. I was mortified to be charging £2 tbh.

Depends on the family. 2 parents 2 dc? 2 parents 7dc?

Yeah I think that's too much for everything but the cake (but would need to see the cake to know). I just paid £1.50 for a tea in a nice cafe. I'd say £1 for tea, 50p per squash / small cookie.

Edit: whoops, meant to clear the quote sorry

That's ridiculous!

Agreed. £2 for tea seems a rip off.

I think the price for cake is ok, a bit on the high side but not outlandish; anything over £1 for tea in those scenarios is crazy and it should be about £0.20p for a cup of squash.

I went to get cake and a drink at our recent sports day. I had £3 on me and thought that was more than enough. Turns out a small slice of cake was £3 alone. I thought that was an absolute rip off.

I feel uncomfortable when the pricing on these events excludes lower earners.

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.

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.

£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.

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.

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.

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.

£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.

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

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