Startup Idea: Intelligent Bakery Order Pricing Software

Startup idea to develop an intelligent software to estimate the cost of custom bakery orders. The software would consider variables such as icing type, skill level required, cake components like flavor, size etc., and calculate the appropriate cost reflecting labor and materials investment and desired profit.

I work for a small business that is a bakery. We have a lot of orders that come in each day, usually requiring 5 to 10 hours of work to complete. These orders are usually cakes, pies, or large platters of cookies. I work as the owner and manager of the business. We have several off-site storage and baking facilities that all touch the order.

When we get the orders, we input the invoices into an electronic system and collect the money onsite. Since they are custom orders, we often guess as to how much to charge the customer based on the amount of labor and materials, as well as a 20% profit. It would be great if there was software that could help me get a better estimate of what the cost would be with inputting minimal details about the product.

For instance, if I put in the type of icing, skill level required to ice the specific pattern (i.e., novice, medium, expert), and the other components of the cake (flavor, size, etc.), that it would spit out a cost for the customer, taking into account these variables. For instance, a large vanilla cake would take more manhours than a small vanilla cake and so the large cake would cost more. However, a large cake with plain frosting details would be cheaper than a small cake with intricate details because it would take more time.