Cake delivery fee calculator
Delivery is the line most bakers leave off the quote, and it is the one that eats a Saturday morning. This costs the round trip at your own fuel price, prices the driving and the setup at your own hourly rate, adds a loading for the cakes that can go wrong on the way, and gives you a fee. Free, no sign-up, eleven currencies, metric or miles, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
Everything is worked out in your browser. Nothing you type is uploaded, saved or shared. Last updated 8 August 2026.
1. The journey
Enter the distance one way. Everything after this is worked out on the round trip, because you have to come home.
2. What the vehicle costs
Fuel is the obvious part and the smaller part. Tyres, servicing, insurance and the value the vehicle loses are the rest, which is what the allowance is for.
3. Your time
The driving time is worked out from the distance and the speed. Everything else is the part people forget: boxing the cake into the car, finding the venue, parking, carrying it in, and standing about while somebody finds the table.
4. Risk, margin and rounding
The loading prices the deliveries that go wrong: the repair on the venue table, the remake at your own cost. It is a provision, not profit.
What a cake delivery actually costs you
Five lines, and only one of them is fuel.
Round trip distance x fuel cost per unit of distance
+ Round trip distance x vehicle allowance
+ (driving hours + loading + parking + setup) x your hourly rate
+ Tolls, parking and congestion charges
+ Risk loading, as a percentage of everything above
= COST TO YOU
Fee = COST TO YOU / (1 - target margin)Run the figures this page opens with. Seventeen kilometres each way is 34 kilometres of driving, which at 7 litres per 100 km and 1.85 a litre is 4.40 of fuel. That is the number everybody thinks of, and it is 12% of the answer.
The vehicle allowance adds 3.40. The driving is about 41 minutes, and loading, parking and setting up adds another 45, so an hour and 26 minutes of your day is gone, which at 18 an hour is 25.74. A 10% risk loading on the lot is 3.35. The delivery costs you 36.90 before any profit, and to hold a 30% margin it needs to be charged at 53.
Two thirds of that is your time. Which is why per-mile rules of thumb fall apart.
Why a rate per mile underprices cake delivery
The advice you will find everywhere is a flat 10 to 25 locally, or 1 to 2 per mile. Both are averages of what people say they charge, and both break in the same place: they price the distance and ignore the hour.
A distance rate assumes cost rises with the miles. Most of the cost of a cake delivery does not. Boxing the cake into the car, driving carefully to a venue you have not been to before, finding somewhere to park with a two-tier cake in the boot, carrying it in, and waiting while a coordinator clears the table all take about the same time whether the drive was three miles or fifteen. On the numbers above, the fixed part is 45 minutes of labour, which is 13.50, and 14.85 once the risk loading is on it. That much is spent before a wheel turns.
That is why a per-mile rate makes short deliveries look profitable when they are not. Fifteen minutes each way at 1.50 a mile might bring in 12, against about 31 of real cost once the parking and the setup are counted.
| Trip | Commonly quoted | Costed properly |
|---|---|---|
| 6 km each way, 10 minutes on site | 10 to 15 | 23 |
| 17 km each way, 30 minutes setting up | 20 to 30 | 53 |
| 42 km each way, 90 minutes stacking a wedding cake | 60 to 90 | 128 |
The one-line test
Take the fee you are about to quote, subtract the fuel, the vehicle allowance, the tolls and the risk provision, and divide what is left by the hours the trip will take. If the answer is below what you charge to decorate, you are delivering at a discount.
What each input means
Every field in plain English, with the number to use if you are guessing.
- Distance one way
- Door to door, as your map app gives it. The calculator doubles it unless you switch the return leg off. Use the driving distance rather than the straight line, which on a rural run can be half as long again.
- Average speed
- Only used to turn distance into driving time. Be honest about it: a 30 km run through a city on a Saturday morning is not a 50 km/h average. Town driving is nearer 30 km/h or 20 mph, mixed roads around 50 km/h or 30 mph, motorway around 90 km/h or 55 mph.
- Fuel price and fuel use
- What you actually pay at the pump and what the vehicle actually returns, not the manufacturer’s figure. Metric asks for litres per 100 km, US and Imperial for miles per gallon, and switching the units selector converts whatever you have already typed. If you know your cost per kilometre or per mile outright, switch the mode and enter it directly.
- Vehicle allowance
- Everything the vehicle costs that is not fuel: tyres, servicing, insurance, repairs and the value it loses by being driven. Most tax authorities publish an approved mileage rate for business use, and that rate minus your fuel cost is a defensible starting point. Zero is not.
- Loading and parking
- Boxing the cake and getting it into the car, then out again at the other end, plus finding somewhere to stop. Fifteen minutes is a light estimate for anything above one tier.
- On-site setup
- Stacking tiers, dowelling, dressing the base with flowers, touching up the buttercream after the drive, and waiting for the venue. Sixty to ninety minutes is normal for a tiered wedding cake. If two of you go, put in the combined hours, because that is what it costs.
- Your hourly rate
- The same rate you use for decorating. There is no reason a driving hour should be cheaper than a piping hour, and there is a good argument it should be dearer, because it happens on a Saturday morning and it cannot be rescheduled.
- Risk loading
- A percentage of the delivery cost that pays for the deliveries that go wrong: the repair on the venue table, the emergency remake, the buttercream that slid in the heat. It is a provision, not profit, and it is the reason a tall sculpted cake travelling assembled is not the same delivery as a boxed sponge.
- Target profit margin
- The business’s profit on top of paying yourself. To hold 30% you divide the cost by 0.7; adding 30% to the cost gives you 23%. The same arithmetic as the cake pricing calculator, for the same reason.
- Free delivery within
- Optional. Enter your free radius and the tool prices any trip that falls inside it, so you can see what the offer is worth. It is a marketing decision, and it is a perfectly good one, as long as it is a decision.
Worked examples
All produced by the calculator above.
The short local drop-off
Six kilometres each way through town at 40 km/h, ten minutes loading and ten on site, no tolls, no risk loading, 18 an hour, 30% margin.
| Fuel | 1.55 |
|---|---|
| Vehicle allowance | 1.20 |
| Your time, 0.63 hours at 18 | 11.40 |
| Cost to you | 14.15 |
| Fee at a 30% margin, rounded up | 21.00 |
| Per km | 1.75 |
Twenty-one for a six-kilometre delivery sounds high until you notice the drive is the smallest line on it. If you quote ten, you are paying about four of your own money for the privilege, every time.
The wedding cake with setup
Forty-two kilometres each way at 55 km/h, twenty minutes loading and parking, ninety minutes stacking and dressing on site, six of parking charges, a 20% risk loading because the tiers travel assembled, an hourly rate of 22 and a 35% margin, rounded up to the nearest 5.
| Fuel | 10.88 |
|---|---|
| Vehicle allowance at 0.12 per km | 10.08 |
| Your time, 3.36 hours at 22 | 73.93 |
| Parking | 6.00 |
| Risk loading at 20% | 20.18 |
| Cost to you | 121.07 |
| Fee at a 35% margin, rounded up to 5 | 190.00 |
| What the trip pays you an hour | 42.51 |
A hundred and ninety for delivery reads like a lot. Look at what it is, though: three hours and twenty minutes of a Saturday, most of it spent doing the most delicate work of the whole job in somebody else’s function room. Bakers who quote sixty for that are not being generous, they are working the last two hours for nothing and carrying the risk of the remake as well.
If the number is more than the couple will pay, the fix is the same as it is on the cake itself: fewer hours, not a lower rate. Box the tiers and stack on site rather than travelling assembled, and both the setup time and the risk loading come down.
Free delivery, and what it costs
Free local delivery is a good offer and a real cost, and the only mistake is not knowing which. On the default vehicle and rate, a trip inside a ten-kilometre radius costs somewhere between 20 and 30 to deliver once your time is counted. Three of those a week is over 3,000 a year.
There are three honest positions and one bad one.
- Charge it. Quote the fee separately, the way this calculator produces it. Customers who need a cake at a venue at a particular hour are rarely price sensitive about getting it there.
- Build it in. Add the local delivery cost to the price of every cake and call delivery free. It is the same money and it is an easier sentence, though it does mean collection customers subsidise delivery ones.
- Give it away deliberately. Free inside a small radius, priced beyond it, as a marketing spend you have chosen and can see.
- Drift into it. Which is the bad one, and it is the most common.
Set your radius in the calculator and it will tell you what the offer is worth per trip. Whatever you decide after that is a decision rather than an accident.
Mistakes that make delivery unprofitable
- Charging one way. Half your fuel and half your time, given away by arithmetic.
- Counting the drive and not the setup. On a wedding cake the setup is usually the longer half.
- Using a cheaper rate for driving. It is the same hour out of the same day.
- Ignoring the second person. Two people for 90 minutes is three hours of labour.
- No risk provision on assembled tiers. One remake a year wipes out the margin on a lot of deliveries.
- Adding a percentage instead of dividing. Costs you about seven points of margin every time.
- Quoting delivery before knowing the venue. Access, stairs and parking change the time more than the distance does.
- Never revisiting it. Fuel prices move. Re-run this page when they do; it takes a minute.
Questions bakers ask about delivery charges
How much should I charge for cake delivery?
Cost the round trip, not the distance on the map, and price your time at the same rate you charge for decorating. On the figures this page opens with, a 17 km each way delivery is 34 km of driving, about 41 minutes at the wheel plus 45 minutes of loading, parking and setting up. That is 4.40 of fuel, 3.40 of vehicle wear and 25.74 of your time, which with a 10% risk loading costs 36.90 and prices at 53 to hold a 30% margin. A flat 10 for that trip is roughly a third of what it costs you.
Should I charge per mile or a flat fee?
Quote a flat fee, but work it out per journey. A rate per mile alone always underprices short deliveries, because loading the car, parking, carrying the box and setting up take the same time whether the drive is two miles or twenty. The usual answer is a call-out fee that covers the fixed part plus a distance rate on top, and this calculator gives you both numbers: the total fee and what it works out at per mile or per kilometre.
How much should I charge to set up a wedding cake?
Time it and charge it. Stacking tiers on site, dowelling, dressing the base with fresh flowers and waiting for a venue coordinator who is dealing with something else routinely takes 60 to 90 minutes, and that is on top of the drive. At an hourly rate of 22 that is 22 to 33 of labour before the vehicle costs, which is why setup deliveries are commonly priced at two or three times a simple drop-off.
Should I offer free delivery locally?
You can, as long as you know what it costs and have decided to spend it. Free delivery is a discount, not a saving, and on a short local run it is commonly worth 15 to 25 out of every order. Set the free radius in the calculator and it prices the trips that fall inside it, so the decision is a deliberate one. Many bakers do better by building the local cost into the cake price and calling delivery free, which is the same money with a better sentence attached.
Do I charge for the return journey?
Yes. The fuel is real, the time is real and you cannot bake while you are driving home. The only case for charging one way is where the trip genuinely doubles as something else you were going to do anyway, and even then you are giving up a Saturday morning slot. The calculator counts the return leg by default and lets you switch it off if your situation is the exception.
What if the cake is damaged on the way?
That is what the risk loading is for. A tiered cake travelling assembled, a tall sculpted piece or a long motorway run in summer heat carries a real chance of a repair on site or a remake at your own cost, and a delivery fee that ignores it is a fee that has priced only the good days. A loading of 10 to 35% of the delivery cost is a reasonable way to spread it. It does not replace insurance, and it does not replace boxing the tiers separately and stacking on site, which remains the cheapest risk control there is.
What if a delivery needs two people?
Then it costs two people. Put the combined hours in: if you and one other person are both there for 90 minutes, that is three hours of labour, not one and a half. Large tiered cakes, awkward venues and anything that has to go up a staircase usually need a second pair of hands, and quietly absorbing that cost is one of the more expensive habits in this trade.
Should the delivery fee carry a profit margin?
It should, for the same reason the cake does. The margin is what pays for the van repair, the quiet January and the tax bill, and none of that stops applying because the work happens to involve a steering wheel. Note the arithmetic: to hold a 30% margin you divide the cost by 0.7, you do not add 30% to it. Adding 30% gives you a 23% margin.
Does this work in miles, gallons and dollars?
Yes. Switch the units selector to US or Imperial and the distance becomes miles, the speed becomes miles per hour, fuel is priced per gallon and consumption is entered as miles per gallon, with every value you have already typed converted for you. The currency selector carries eleven currencies. None of the arithmetic depends on the country you are in, because every figure in it is one you entered.
Is anything I type here saved or uploaded?
No. The whole calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, stored or logged, there is no account and no email address is asked for. Close the tab and the numbers are gone.
This page prices the journey. The cake pricing calculator prices the cake, and it has a delivery field you can drop this number straight into.
If you deliver every weekend
This page prices one journey and forgets it when you close the tab. That is deliberate, and it stays free. What it cannot do is remember your vehicle, your rate and the venues you drive to most often, so the fourth quote this week costs you the same few minutes as the first. The Cake Pricing Calculator workbook (€7, Excel, Google Sheets or LibreOffice) keeps your ingredient price list, 20 recipes, five quotes side by side, an order book with the profit and margin on every job including the delivery, and a dashboard showing which of your products actually make money. One payment, no subscription, no account.
See what is in the workbook