Do You Tip Wedding Cake Delivery Staff?

Wedding cakes are a hallmark of the memories you’ll create, whether it’s the elaborate cutting to-do for your first bites, the slice you’ll store in your freezer for a future anniversary, or simply seeing your closest family and friends all sharing in the special dessert.

At the end of the day, the wedding cake is—quite likely—the most important pastry you’ll encounter. As such, chances are you’ve done your due diligence throughout the wedding planning process, conducting a cake tasting, making your custom wedding cake order, and ensuring your cake gets delivered without a hitch on your wedding day.

But what about that last detail? Should you tip the people who deliver your custom wedding cake? Considering tips are typically given in cash, it’s important to be able to anticipate the gesture in advance so that you can have money on hand on the day of the special occasion.

Here, we’ll break down everything you need to know about tipping wedding cake delivery personnel, including whether or not you actually need to do so, how much you should give, plus how to hand off the money without a hitch.

Why You Should Tip

Bakery employees will deliver your custom cake on your wedding date and set it up at the wedding venue. Typically a delivery fee is paid in advance at the time you place your order for the delicious cake.

That said, it’s customary to tip people who do the actual delivery. Similar to normal food delivery when you’re ordering take-out food for a casual dinner, there’s often a delivery fee included in the service, but there’s typically also a spot for you to tip the actual delivery person. And considering the importance of a wedding day, it makes all the more sense that you’d want to tip the people who set up your custom cake with care.

How Much Should You Tip?

You can calculate your tip based on the delivery fee itself, the amount of workers it takes to deliver the beautiful cake, the amount of setup involved in its placement, or what you feel is reasonable for similar services.

Typically $10 to $20 per delivery person is in line with the standard, but if it’s an elaborate setup, then you should increase that amount accordingly. You can either dole out the tip to each person individually or present it for them to split amongst themselves.

You can ask the cake shop beforehand the likely size of their delivery team, so you can plan properly. Or you can wait until the day of the cake order, but simply have enough cash on hand in anticipation of a large team, since it’s better to have excess than to come up short. You can also ask the cake shop what the timeframe is for delivery, so you know when to have the tip ready. Considering they’re professionals who do this frequently, they’ll likely have all of the answers for you.

How to Do Tip Wedding Cake Delivery Personnel

So you’re planning to tip the cake delivery people, but you want to add a gift of class to the transfer of cash? To avoid an awkward hand-off, place the amount you’ve settled upon in an envelope and hand it to the delivery personnel before they leave, but after they finish the setup process. You can even use some of your wedding-specific stationery versus a plain envelope to add a personal touch.

Depending on when the beautiful cake will be delivered, you might be totally busy and swept up in the swirl of the ceremony. Even if not, you don’t necessarily want to be distracted by details like this on the actual day. So you can be entirely present, put the tip set aside in an envelope, and let a relative or your planner hand it off for you.

It’s customary to tip almost everyone involved with the setup of your big day, and the wedding vendors who deliver your cake are no exception. There’s no exact figure, but there are elements that can help you decide on a fair amount. But remember: Beginning this next chapter of your partnership with generosity is never the wrong move. In the process, you’ll make good with the workers who have invested energy into helping keep your events running smoothly.