I have been baking for my son't restaurant for 3 years and I am getting several requests for some of my desserts; cakes, cheesecakes, pies from his customers. How do I know what to charge. I can't quite figure out how to add in everything. How do you figure the flour, sugar, etc. I know he charges $3.99 per dessert.
Thanks

Very simplistically.....

- Assume a 5-lb bag of flour is $2.60.
- There are 20 cups of flour in a 5-lb bag. You can find that out by reading the Nutrition Info label on the side of the bag or go to www.ask.com and ask "how many cups of flour in a 5 lb bag?"
- $2.60 divided by 20 = $0.13 per cup.

12 eggs in a dozen. $2.10 per dozen. $2.10 divided by 12 = $0.175/egg.

Do that for all of your ingredients, then once you have the basic pricing info, you can see what your supply-costs are per recipe.

If it costs you $6.18 to make something that yields 8 servings, then your supply cost per serving is $0.7725 per serving.

Then you need to factor overhead costs ... elec, water, cleaning supplies, rent, insurance, payroll, etc. Since your son runs a restaurant, he probably has formula he uses for overhead costs, so check with him and see what he uses.

Here's an example of how I figure out my pricing:

1 bag of flour (20kg) = 20,000grams@ $13.75 cost 0.0006875 per gram

1 bag of sugar (20kg) = 20,000grams@ $16.59 cost 0.0008295 per gram

Eggs (18 )@ $3.25 cost 0.185 per egg

Canola Oil (5L) = 16000ml@ $18.99 cost 0.001186 per ml

I do it this way so that I can figure out exactly how much everything costs down to measurement. I break everything down to the gram/ml for exact math.

So if a cake calls for 3/4 cup of sugar I'll go XXX.Xg x 0.0008295
If I need 1/3 cup of canola oil I'll multiply XX.Xml x 0.001186

Hope that helps, I'd be happy to send you my list of breakdowns to give you an idea of what I do.

Thank you. You are welcome to send any information that could help me to [email protected]

Colleen (aka mom, dessert queen & martha!)