The Ultimate Cake Stall - Show Me The Money
You need to get the pricing right for your particular event. A school fete will be different from a stall at a corporate venue. Also if it's a town centre stall have a quick recce beforehand and see what the cake shops pricing is like, undercutting them will aid success.
Fundraising Ideas
Win a cake baked just for you - Lets face it, however good an individual cake is there is only so much someone will buy that one cake for. By selling raffle tickets for a cake you can easily raise far more, in my experience up to 10 times more. What I've found popular is to win a cake that will be made for the winner any time within the next year. To have a special cake made for a birthday, anniversary or Christmas is very popular.
Guess ingredient x - Make a charge and give a small square of tray bake, if they guess it right their name goes into a hat to win something, depending on your audience a voucher or bottle of wine go down well. BBC Good Food do some interesting vegetable cakes, one of my favourites is the Parsnip and Maple Syrup, for this project I omit the pecans, it tastes gorgeous and parsnip isn't an obvious choice!
Coffee morning plus - The coffee morning is a great fundraiser, if you can add a plus you can raise even more, why not get people to bring accessories and costume jewellery to swap in a 'Swishing' style? This is overcomes the problem of clothes size if you have a limited group of different sized friends. You can also make a small charge to come to swapping event which can go straight to your chosen charity.
Going large - You ain't seen muffin yet - I was lucky enough to be a mere volunteer at the 2013 Oxfordshire Bake Off, wow! My hat goes off to Kate Kellaway-Moor, she did the most amazing job of organising this, the up shot of which was a mahoosive £4,000 for the charities the event supported, Oxfam and Helen and Douglas House. It was essentially a baking competition with categories for bakes with a junior option too, there were loads of other things going on on the day, at the end the competitors' cakes, biscuits, breads and bakes were sold to raise even more money. Well worth visiting the site on the previous link and checking out their Facebook page. This is a huge project to pull off, and I'm not suggesting everyone should or could do this, however, you cannot fail to be impressed with the amount raised. Big round of applause to Kate!
Sponsorship
You can often put a stall together for nothing with donated cakes and borrowed cake stands. If you have had to buy table coverings, cake boxes and tea and coffee, if you are serving it, then getting your stall sponsored by a company will ensure that the charity will benefit from all you raise. A lot of companies will be happy to pay the £20, £30, £40 plus that it has cost to put the stall together in exchange for advertising. You could ask them to print some sheets of address labels, these can have whatever they want on, and these can be stuck on the boxes and bags as you sell. The lower you can keep your budget, the more likely you are to find a local company who will happily put their hand in their pocket, it's not much to ask to cover your minimal costs in exchange for advertising.
Professional bakers
A good number of professional bakers are willing to donate to particular charity events. Be aware that they are approached all the time for this, and make sure you make it worth their while as much as you can. Allow them to put business cards in with their offerings, and if your event has a Facebook page or website make sure they get public thanks. It's good advertising for them, it allows them to reach a local audience they might not have otherwise been able to tap into.
We really can bake the world a better place, one cake at a time.
Organising a cake stall? Need cake? Then please email, Bake a Change can't wait to hear about any events, large or small!
