# How to sell gingerbread houses and Christmas cookie boxes: pricing, drops, corporate orders and capacity

> Sell gingerbread houses and Christmas cookie boxes as capped pre-order drops with fixed collection dates, priced by profit per bench hour, with orders open in early November.

Sell gingerbread houses and Christmas cookie boxes as pre-order drops: a
fixed number of each, a release date announced ahead, a per-customer limit
and one or two fixed collection or dispatch dates. Set each cap from the bench
hours you have in December, price by profit per hour rather than by
what last year cost, and take a deposit at booking on corporate orders. Open
orders about six weeks before your first collection date, which is early
November in both hemispheres; what differs north and south is the weather your
gingerbread has to survive and when your customers go on holiday.

## Price by profit per bench hour

In December you are not short of customers, you are short of hours. Every
product competes for the same oven, bench and drying racks, so rank them by
what each hour earns after materials.

Profit per hour = (price - ingredients and packaging) / hands-on hours per unit

An example, in Australian dollars:

| Product | Price | Ingredients and packaging | Hours per unit | Profit per hour |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Gingerbread house, 20 cm | A$120 | A$15 | 1.5 | **A$70** |
| Box of 9 decorated Christmas cookies | A$45 | A$6 | 0.5 | **A$78** |
| Undecorated gingerbread people, bag of 6 | A$15 | A$2.50 | 0.1 | **A$125** |

Two decisions follow. The product with the lowest profit per hour either goes
up in price or gets a smaller cap. And the simple, fast product deserves a
bigger cap than its price suggests, because it fills the gaps between the
showpieces. Check every price against its full cost, with your hourly rate in
it, using the [cake pricing calculator](/blog/cake-pricing-calculator) method;
[how to price decorated cookies](/blog/how-to-price-cookies-for-a-cookie-business)
has the per-dozen arithmetic for boxes.

Seasonal products carry seasonal costs: special cutters, printed boxes,
cellophane and ribbon you will not use again until next year. Spread them over
this year's cap, not over a hypothetical repeat.

## Set the cap from your hours

Cap = (bench hours available for this product) / hands-on hours per unit

Count every hour: December custom orders, markets, deliveries and the
time a gingerbread house spends drying between stages. If you have 60 hours
for houses at 1.5 hours each, the cap is 40, not the 60 you could sell. Leave
a tenth of the hours unallocated for breakages and the order you forgot.

Houses need a structure day. Bake and cut panels in one session, let them dry,
assemble in the next, and decorate after the joins have set. Build the
schedule backwards from collection day and the cap falls out of it.

## Run it as a drop

- **Announce the date and time a week ahead**, and open a waitlist so your
  regulars are first through the door.
- **Cap each product** at the number you worked out, and **limit each
  customer**, typically to two houses or three boxes, so one buyer cannot take
  the run.
- **Fix the collection or dispatch date** for the whole drop ("collect Saturday
  20 December, 9am to 1pm"), so you bake to a date instead of to whatever each
  customer picked.
- **Take full payment at order.** A seasonal drop is a small, fixed-price
  purchase; a deposit only adds a second payment to chase in your busiest
  week.
- **Run a second drop** if the first sells out quickly, rather than raising
  the first cap on the day. If it sold out in minutes, the next drop can carry
  a higher price.

## Corporate gifting: deposits and terms

Corporate orders (100 branded cookie boxes for clients, a gingerbread house
for each office) are the most valuable December work and the most likely to
change.

- **Take a deposit at booking**, 50% is the usual default, enough to cover the
  printed boxes, custom cutters and stencils bought for that order. See
  [how to take a deposit](/answers/how-do-i-take-a-deposit-on-a-cake-order).
- **Set an artwork and quantity deadline**, two to three weeks before
  dispatch, after which the quantity can go up but not down.
- **Balance before dispatch** for a new client. An established client with a
  good record can have an invoice on 7 or 14 days.
- **Charge setup once per design**: the logo stencil, the sample box and the
  proof.
- **Put it in writing**: quantity, unit price, dispatch or delivery dates and
  addresses, the artwork deadline and what happens if they cancel.

## Southern and northern hemisphere timing

**Northern hemisphere (US, UK, Canada).** December is cold and indoor air is
dry, which suits gingerbread and royal icing. The season starts earlier: US
customers move from Thanksgiving (the fourth Thursday of November) straight
into Christmas, and UK Christmas markets open from mid-November. Open
pre-orders in early November and put your last collection a few days before
Christmas, with shipping cutoffs earlier again. Shipped orders face cold,
which is kinder to cookies than heat but harder on couriers in the last
week; [shipping cakes by courier](/blog/shipping-cakes-by-courier) covers
the cutoffs.

**Southern hemisphere (Australia, New Zealand).** Christmas falls in summer.
Humidity softens gingerbread walls and makes royal icing sticky, and heat
melts chocolate and lollies on the roof. Bake houses drier and a little
thicker, seal them in cellophane as soon as they are set, and tell customers
to keep them out of the sun and the fridge. School summer holidays start in mid
to late December, so customers want collection earlier, not on the 23rd. Open
pre-orders in early November and set your final collection a week before
Christmas. The heat, the shutdown and the cash flow are covered in
[running a bakery through a summer Christmas](/blog/running-a-bakery-through-a-summer-christmas).

## Running Christmas in ibakepro

ibakepro, bakery management software used for seasonal releases from a home
kitchen up to bakeries selling thousands of boxes, runs each Christmas release
as a [limited-release drop](/features/limited-release-drops): an opening time,
a waitlist, a cap per product, a limit per customer and a fixed collection,
delivery or dispatch date, and it cannot sell past the cap in a rush. Drops are
on Growth and Business. Corporate orders take a deposit and a balance date on a
[payment schedule](/features/payment-schedules-and-deposits) with reminders,
and the terms can be signed online with [e-sign](/features/e-sign).