Feature
An ingredient price tracker for bakers that tells you what to charge
An ingredient price tracker for bakers is only useful if it answers the next question: which of my products now sell too cheap, and what should they cost? Farinu does that. Each time you record a new price for an ingredient, it recosts every recipe that uses it, sub-recipes included, and if a product now sells below the price your target markup sets on any price list, you get a margin alert with a suggested price. One tap raises it, or you dismiss it and keep your price.
Why an ingredient price increase quietly eats your margin
Butter goes up a dollar a pound and nothing in your kitchen looks different. The cake still sells at the same price, customers still order it, and the bank balance moves so slowly you only notice months later. The problem is not the increase itself, it is that you cannot see which products it touched.
One ingredient often sits in a dozen recipes, sometimes hidden inside a buttercream, a dough or a filling you reuse. Working out by hand which prices to change means recosting all of them. Most bakers never get around to it, and that is where the margin goes.
Read next: Ingredient price increases in a bakery: recost, reprice, and tell customers
How the Farinu ingredient price tracker for bakers raises margin alerts
You set a target for each product: either a target markup, a default markup for the whole bakery, or a fixed target price. When you record a new price for an ingredient, Farinu finds every sellable recipe that uses it, directly or through a sub-recipe at any depth, and checks its prices on each of your price lists against that target.
If a product now sells below target, Farinu opens an alert and notifies the owner. The alert shows the product, its current price, the suggested price rounded to your rounding step, the margin you are making right now, and each price list the change would raise.
- Accept: the suggested price is set on every price list that sells the product below it. Nothing is ever lowered and free items stay free.
- Dismiss: the alert closes and your price lists stay as they are.
- If a later ingredient price change puts the product back on target, or it has since been archived or taken off sale, the open alert closes on its own.
- A product has at most one open alert, so a second increase updates it instead of piling up notifications.
Worked example: butter goes from $4.00 to $5.00 a pound
These numbers are an example, not data from any bakery. Say your vanilla layer cake uses 1.5 lb of butter across the sponge and the buttercream sub-recipe, and your chocolate chip cookies use 0.5 lb per dozen. Both have a target markup of 100%, meaning the price should be at least twice the cost.
You record the new butter price. The cake's cost rises by $1.50, from $18.50 to $20.00, so its target price is now $40.00, but it sells at $36.00. Farinu raises an alert: margin now 44%, suggested price $40.00. The cookies' cost rises by $0.50 to $7.00, and their $14.00 price still meets the target, so no alert is raised for them.
| Product | Cost before | Cost after | Current price | Target price | Alert |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanilla layer cake | $18.50 | $20.00 | $36.00 | $40.00 | Yes, suggests $40.00 |
| Chocolate chip cookies, dozen | $6.50 | $7.00 | $14.00 | $14.00 | No, still on target |
Food cost alerts built on real recipe costing
The alerts are only as good as the costs behind them, so they run on Farinu's full recipe costing: ingredients, packaging, sub-recipes, labour, machines and overhead. The suggested price uses the same rule as the rest of the app, so what an alert recommends matches what you see on the recipe's cost breakdown.
Farinu keeps a dated history of each ingredient's price, so you can see how a cost moved over time. Past sales keep the price and cost they had when you sold them; an increase never rewrites your history or your monthly P&L for earlier months.
Read next: Bakery recipe costing software, Bakery price list software, one list per place you sell
Who sees the alerts
Margin alerts are for the owner. Helpers, the role for people who bake or pack with you, never see costs or margins, so the alerts page and its notifications are hidden from them.
Questions
- What triggers a margin alert?
- Recording a new price for an ingredient. Farinu checks every sellable product that uses it, including through sub-recipes, and alerts you when one now sells below its target on any price list.
- Do I get an alert when my labour rate or rent changes?
- No. Alerts come from ingredient price changes only. When you change a rate such as labour, a machine or a fixed cost, the bakery settings page shows its effect on your prices using the same suggestion rule.
- Why did a product not raise an alert?
- It needs a target: a target markup or target price on the recipe, or a default markup for the bakery. It also has to be on at least one price list with a price above zero, and that price has to fall below the target.
- Will accepting a suggestion change my wholesale prices too?
- Accepting raises the price on every list that sells the product below the suggestion. If you want a different wholesale price, lower it afterwards on the price lists page.
Related pages
Know the moment an ingredient price increase hits your margin
Create a free Farinu account: the free plan covers costing for up to 10 recipes, and margin alerts tell you what to charge.