Selling and marketing
Cake Wholesale Company: Case Cost and Your Margin (2026)
What a cake wholesale company charges per case, and what you keep when you sell cakes wholesale to shops.
On this page
Two very different people search for a cake wholesale company. One wants to stop paying retail for flour and boxes. The other has a cafe asking for a standing order and no idea what to charge. The math is the same on both sides, and it is the part most home bakers skip.
What to remember
- A case price only helps if the cost per cake beats what you pay now.
- A shop order is not profit until you subtract your hours.
- Ask for the minimum order and the payment terms in writing.
- Price the whole month, not one cake.
Buying from a cake wholesale company or selling to one
A cake wholesale company sells to shops, cafes, and resellers, not to one person at a time. When you buy from one, you trade a lower cost per cake for a minimum order and a shelf life you have to plan around. When you sell to one, you trade a smaller price per cake for a repeat order you can count on.
Both sides use the same number: your cost per cake. If you do not know it, you cannot tell a good case price from a bad one, and you cannot tell whether a shop order pays you. Our guide to cake ingredients wholesale walks through a batch cost line by line, and the selling guides hub covers the rest of the money side.
What a case price hides
A case price looks cheap because it is big. Divide it by the number of cakes in the case before you compare it to anything. A $60 case of 12 is $5 a cake. A $45 case of 6 is $7.50 a cake, even though the number on the invoice is smaller.
Then check what you will actually use. If a case holds more than you sell in a month, the money sits in your freezer, not in your pocket. Flour and dry goods keep, so a bigger case can pay off. Frosting, fruit, and anything fresh does not. See cake flour wholesale for how case size changes the cost per pound.
The worked example: one 10 inch cake sold wholesale
Say a shop wants 20 cakes a month and you quote $52 each. Your ingredients for one cake come to $6.40. Your hands-on time is 1.5 hours, and you pay yourself $18 an hour, so labor is $27.00. Overhead is $2.10: a box and board, a share of the power, and 50 cents of your $20 a month Brevl fee spread across 40 orders that month. Total cost is $35.50. At $52, you keep $16.50 a cake, about 32 percent. Twenty cakes a month is $330 in margin. At $40 a cake you would keep $4.50 each, or $90 for the month.
If the shop’s number lands below your total cost, you have three moves. Cut the size, simplify the finish, or walk away. Cutting your own pay is not one of them, because you will quit the account in three months and lose the shop anyway.
The mistakes that cost you money
The second mistake is counting ingredients and stopping there. Ingredients are usually the smallest of the three numbers. Labor is the one that grows when a shop asks for a different color, a logo, or a Friday delivery. Overhead is the one people forget completely, and it is the reason a price that works at ten cakes a month stops working at forty.
The third mistake is agreeing to a standing order without checking your week. A shop that wants 20 cakes every Friday is a job. If you already sell at a market on Saturday, you need to know which one moves. Write the order into a weekly plan before you promise it.
One more: buying the case before you have the order. A stack of boxes in the garage is money you cannot spend. Buy small the first month, prove the order repeats, then buy in bulk.
What to check before you commit
Before you agree to anything, get five answers. Write them down, because a phone call is easy to misremember and a standing order runs for months.
Get the case count in writing
Ask how many cakes are in the case and what one cake weighs. Compare cost per cake, not cost per case.
Ask the minimum order
Find out the smallest order they will take and whether that number changes by season.
Ask when you get paid
Net 30 means you bake in March and get paid in April. Know that before you buy ingredients.
Check the delivery day
A Friday delivery can collide with a Saturday market. Pick the day you can actually keep.
Cost one cake before you say yes
Run ingredients, labor, and overhead, then compare the price they offered to your total cost.
Getting paid and keeping the margin
Wholesale buyers often pay by check or transfer on terms, so your money arrives after your costs. Keep a cash cushion for the first month of any new account. If you take card payments through your own Stripe or Square account, the money lands in your bank on the processor’s schedule, not the shop’s.
Brevl is $20 a month flat and takes no cut of your sales, so a $52 cake is $52. It works on a phone and on a computer, and you can take cards through your own Stripe or Square account plus Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, and cash. There is a 14 day free trial. If you are weighing card fees against a monthly fee, cake POS cost lays out the range.
Try the free bake pricing calculator
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- Cake packaging wholesale: cost per 100 boxes
- Cake cost calculator in Excel: 5 columns
- Cake price with size: what to charge by inch
Common questions
Is a cake wholesale company cheaper than the grocery store?
A case price is lower per cake than buying one at a time, but you pay for the whole case up front and you have to use it before it goes stale. Compare cost per cake and shelf life, not the invoice total.
How do I price cakes for a shop?
Add ingredients, your hours at a rate you set, and overhead like boxes, power, and your monthly shop fee. That total is your floor. Anything above it is margin. Quote from the total, never from ingredient cost alone, because labor is usually the biggest of the three.
Do I need a license to sell cakes wholesale?
That depends on your state and on whether you sell to a shop or to a person. Check your state's cottage food rules before you sign a wholesale account, and ask the shop what paperwork they need from you.
What payment terms should I expect?
Many shops pay on terms, which means you bake first and get paid later. Ask for the number of days in writing and keep enough cash to cover ingredients for the first month. If terms are too long, ask for a deposit.
How many cakes do I need to sell to make wholesale worth it?
Work it out from your margin per cake, not from the order size. If you keep $16.50 a cake, 20 cakes a month is $330. If you keep $4.50, the same 20 cakes is $90. Order size does not change whether the work pays.
General information, not legal or tax advice. Check your state's rules before you sign a wholesale account.