What would be the approx. price range of a cake to serve 140 people at a party?

Question

We are planning a luncheon party at a restaurant and are on a budget. We're debating between ordering the restaurant's specialty dessert and ordering a cake from a bakery. Any idea what would be the price range of a cake that serves up to 140 people? This would be in an affluent suburb of an East Coast city.

Answer 1

Depends on if you want a tiered cake or just a sheet cake. Sheet cakes are much cheaper. Tiered cake go by how many servings you get with the layers. Im a cake decorator, now for us 140 servings would be a 12'' 10'' 8'' and a 6'' round evan.. But all bakeries have different serving sizes, idk why but they do... with the sizes i gave you too the piece of cake ar not going to be very big either. they will be very thin slivers for each serving. now if you want a different shaped cake like square or hex most if not all bakeries charge more too. The price also depends on the kinds of decoration for example like wedding cakes. there's the basic bettercream iced cakes with flowers or swiss dots or you could get more elaborate like fondant covered with cornelli or sugar flowers which will cost more per serving. so it really depends on how much you wanna spend on the cake. Cupcake cakes too are in the trend these days. using a cake stand to tier them is also something you could think about and are usually cheaper than a tierd cake. Most bakeries need their customers to book ahead before their event. Some need 2-3 weeks in advance to like 6months in advance too for tiered cakes. Sheet cakes you could most likely order a week in advance, because they're simple and no so much complex .so there are alot of things you need to keep in mind

Answer 2

i know this probably isn't as 'classy' as you may like... but once a month at my office we celebrate everyones birthday by getting a cake for about 140 ppl... i go to Giant Eagle- it's nothing you'd see on the food network- but it's really good and it looks fine... i only get one sheet cake and i can feed everyone- but i cut the pieces small.  even if you get two- you can't beat 80 bucks!  they have different flavors- almond and banana are really good and they can split each sheet cake into 2 flavors.  we've got a giant eagle with a pretty extravagant bakery- i'm sure you could find one that could do something nice on your budget

Answer 3

It would be a LOT. I would say like 400$ maybe even 500$ but it all depends on where you go because for my bday cake that I'm getting from a bakery it serves about 24 people and it's $64... But it really depends on where you're getting it from [:

Answer 4

I think if you look around you can get the cake(s) for under $200.00 easily.

You would need Two full sheet cakes since each sheet cake serves approx 80 people and will cost around $140-$150 dollars for both.

Depending how the cake is cut you could get up to 100 servings out of a sheet cake and then buy a half sheet and cut it to serve 50, they will be very thin slices though.

Find out if the restaurant charges a "cake plating fee" because that can run you more money than you planned and it might be more cost effective to get their specialty dessert.

Hope I helped =)