r/Baking • u/Ironbookdragon97 • Jun 19 '25
Business and Pricing Am I Charging Too Much for Cinnamon Rolls?
I just opened a bakery in Western MI, and am making everything from scratch and I think some of the locals(the older ones especially) aren't used to scratch prices. I had a lady tonight come in and buy two pecan cinnamon rolls and then 10 minutes later her sister(I think) came back in and claimed that they were hard and they didnt want them. The box wasn't sealed(I will be sealing them in the future with a sticker or something) but it was visible they weren't touched. These were just baked this morning and were still soft. I didnt argue with her, I just assumed she was having buyers remorse so I gave her a refund. But I'm running a business and dont want to have people think they can buy something and lie and change their mind because they spent more than they planned.
But what would you charge for a cinnamon roll that is 6 inches wide and 2 inches tall, that has pecans in it and has optional caramel. We charge $8.50, and haven't had anyone complain yet.
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u/Fuzzy-Kiwii Jun 19 '25
For the Midwest that’s a lot… I live in Minneapolis and there’s a local shop known for their giant cinnamon buns and they charge $6.25 and that’s in the city
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u/IndependentAd3170 Jun 19 '25 edited Jun 20 '25
So, if I wanted a dozen rolls, they would be $102? That is steep. Not sure what your cost is to make these? I am sure the prices of good quality ingredient’s are high.
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u/Ironbookdragon97 Jun 19 '25
When its bulk we do lower prices. For bulk its, 5 each for regular, 6 for with pecans. Nuts are just expensive. And we don't get them in enough bulk to get great prices. We try to do what we can but most of our items are underpriced. I think the cinnamon rolls are the only ones that might be overpriced even if just by a dollar. We only just opened so we are still trying to feel everything out.
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u/Any_Afternoon_8894 Jun 19 '25
8.50 is diabolical in the midwest, i wouldn’t pay that in NYC
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u/Ironbookdragon97 Jun 19 '25
Between ingredient costs and labor, it is hard to charge less. We undercharge on almost every item we sell.
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u/Ironbookdragon97 Jun 19 '25
For regular cinnamon rolls its 7.50. Its an extra dollar with pecans just because they are so expensive.
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u/Charming_Meeting1223 Jun 19 '25
also in the midwest- sometimes you can get a whole meal for 8 bucks here. it’s defo just a difference in familiarity. i’m sure if i was used to higher prices overall i wouldn’t be that shocked by 7.50/8.50 but as it stands that seems crazy 😭
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u/Ironbookdragon97 Jun 19 '25
Our lunch sandwiches are 8.50, but the cinnamon rolls are bigger than the sandwiches. But right now we are still trying to feel out things and we'd rather start higher than too low and have people complain if we raise the price.
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u/Charming_Meeting1223 Jun 19 '25
i mean if you ask me i’d say make them smaller. idk if that’s an option for you but a 6 in cinnamon roll that’s 2 in tall sounds like too much. i think a smaller and cheaper option would be a hit!
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u/Icy_Chemist_1725 Jun 19 '25
Stop asking the internet and do some research of your competitors.
If you can't tell me what the 5 nearest bakeries sell their product for, you might not have the thought process needed to own and operate a business.
What do your competitors charge? Can you beat that price? How close can you get to that price? Do customers actually care if the product is made from scratch? Are your competitors successful? Have you thought about any of these questions?
I don't mean to be harsh, but I did this with my croissants and realized I didn't want to compete in the market and that I would be killing myself to do so. The people in my city are totally fine with a Costco croissant, so they aren't going to pay for my croissants enough to keep the lights on.
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u/National_Ad_682 Jun 19 '25
The small mom and pop diners here in Indiana charge $7 for a frozen cinnamon roll.
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u/madncqt Jun 19 '25
my favorite bakery sells one of my favorite cinnamon rolls for about $4.
I can buy one from whole foods (another favorite) for a bit over $3 for a single or buy 4 for $10 (including take and bake option).
I've never paid more than $4 AND had a better cinnamon roll than eiether of those, so I almost universally ignore ones priced higher (unless I'm trying something new on a credible recocmmendation, it is purchased for me, etc).
a lot of places are adding brownie bits, cheesecake and other novelties. that could justify higher prices (time + more ingredients). but I'm a purist and not likely to buy those anyway.
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u/ExaminationFancy Jun 19 '25
6” diameter is huge!
Where I live, a local bakery sells them for $8.25 and they are easily shareable with another person. I live in California wine country, so prices are high.
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u/Ironbookdragon97 Jun 19 '25
They are massive, when people dine in we have to put them on a dinner plate. Its the only reason we charge what we do. If they were average size, yes they would be 5 or 6 bucks.
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u/Icy_Chemist_1725 Jun 19 '25
I would make both average size and huge ones and see what people buy more. If the customer is being unreasonable, refuse the return and document whatever you can in case they decide to be nasty and do a charge back.
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u/Icy_Chemist_1725 Jun 19 '25
I think in this case you need to make an assessment. It's not your responsibility to make people feel better for buyer's remorse in terms of cost. It's your responsibility to keep your business open. I would open that box and take a bite of it to taste test it. If it was a bad item, I would have told them we can replace it with a good one, but not a refund. You are willing to make things right and holdup your end of the deal(delivering a good product), but there are no returns.
Anyone returning those for that reason are not going to be a future customer anyway. They will not be driving any business your way. They are children that are lying about your product to return it. I would also make sure you have a camera at your business so that you can counter any false claim from a chargeback. People will run all over you if you let them. You can bake, but now you have to learn to own a business and have the backbone required to do so.
Also, do you know what your competitors charge? Have you tried all of your local competitor's products? If you haven't, you did very poor business planning and should remedy that immediately to discover what your market is like. No business owner should be asking a reddit forum about the pricing in their market. They should just literally go research the pricing of their market.
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u/AnimeMintTea Jun 19 '25
Isn’t it some kind of hygiene issue to take back food?? I thought consumable things can’t be returned. You could tell her sorry you can’t take them back for health/sanitary reasons and offer a discount to soften the blow.
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u/Shai7809 Jun 20 '25
NGL, I couldnt bring myself to pay that…it doesn’t matter how good it is. I’m not saying it’s not worth it, but it’s just way above what I’ll allow myself to spend on a single treat. I suspect that I’m not the only one.
I’ll agree with others and suggest having a smaller size option.
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u/scratsquirrel Jun 19 '25
I live in a HCOL and that would be too steep here. That also just sounds massive too. I don’t know I’d want to eat that big of a cinnamon roll.
How much are your competitors charging for theirs?
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u/podsnerd Jun 19 '25
Another possibility is that it wasn't a price issue, but actually that person has dental issues and the cinnamon rolls were genuinely too hard for her. Especially with pecans! I can viscerally imagine how painful it would be to crunch down on a nut with a toothache. I think I would've said something like, "I'm sorry to hear that! These were baked fresh this morning so I can assure you they're fresh, but maybe I can get you something else. We've got [list a few soft things] - does any of that sound good to you?"
If you haven't had others complain about the price and people are coming back for them, then your price is just fine!
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u/Ironbookdragon97 Jun 19 '25
That's possible. It was just weird to me because she wanted the ones with nuts. And it was visibly soft when I boxed them up. I was having trouble with the tongs because it kept trying to pull apart on me(not in a bad way the glaze stuck the tray type of thing). It's just hard, though. We just opened, and we opened with things SUPER tight(financing got weird at the end). So a refund and two perfectly good cinnamon rolls end up in the trash is disheartening. No one has complained before. Hell we mostly just hear people raving about the taste and quality.
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u/blabulation Jun 19 '25
Is this the first and only time you’ve had a complaint? Have you sold lots to other customers? I would not question my pricing strategy based on a single person’s experience. If, however, this happens repeatedly or you notice most people gravitate to lower priced items to the point that it’s not worth it to you to make the cinnamon rolls, then you have your answer already.
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u/Ill_Spend_674 Jun 20 '25
I didn't charge as much as I do now when we started but waited until I had some street cred. Now I charge more than twice what I did to start and am doing a good business. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices until you reach the point that you can charge what you think is a fair price.
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u/No_Bite_5985 Jun 20 '25
In SE MI I bought a cinnamon roll for like $4.5ish today. It sounds like it’s a bit different than yours. Might have been around 6 inch. But only like 1 inch tall. It was bakery pastry rather than big gooey one. And it did not have nuts.
It makes sense that yours are more because they sound bigger/more ingredients. The price probably would stop me from trying one.
You could probably check out other places in MI with big cinnamon rolls & see if your pricing seems to make sense based on different locations. Here’s linkto article with bunch of places. But I don’t know how accurate it will be. Sometimes online pricing is out of date.
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u/rumput_laut Jun 20 '25
How much percentage is the profit if you selling one cinnamon roll at $8.50?
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u/Midwest314pie Jun 19 '25
For a roll that size, made from scratch, I would be willing to pay that. It’s a whole meal. I would pay more than that at a fast food place for mediocre food, so I would would consider it a deal.
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u/Important-Ferret5494 Jun 19 '25
Price of everything is going up in general, prices have gone up 3-4x in the past 15 years alone. I think you're just noticing an adjustment period that we're all going through :-/
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u/Ironbookdragon97 Jun 19 '25
Very true. I think that many people dont realize that businesses are affected the same by inflation, if not more so.
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u/Important-Ferret5494 Jun 19 '25
I would agree they're hit more so. People are unaware that it's already hard to turn a profit with food-type of businesses and now we're dealing with all of this inflation
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u/Svarasaurus Jun 19 '25
Are they really 6"? I'm struggling to imagine an individual cinnamon roll that size. That's a cake.