Feature
Bakery price list software, one list per place you sell
A bakery price list in Farinu is one named list per sales channel, such as retail, wholesale or the weekend market, with a price for every product you sell. Your costs come from your costed recipes, so you can see whether each price still leaves a margin, and your sales and orders pull the right price automatically instead of from memory.
Why one bakery price list is not enough
Most small bakers start with one price per cake and a few exceptions they remember. Then a café asks for a dozen loaves a week, a market charges a stall fee, and a friend of a friend wants a discount. Soon the same brownie has four prices, and nobody is sure which one is current.
Retail vs wholesale prices: a worked example
Retail vs wholesale prices differ because the jobs differ. Wholesale buyers take volume, collect or accept a fixed delivery, and resell at their own markup, so they expect a lower price. Retail customers buy one at a time and pay for the convenience. The question is how low wholesale can go and still pay you.
Here is an example with made-up but realistic numbers. Say a chocolate loaf cake costs you 6.40 USD to make once ingredients, the box, your time, oven use and a share of overhead are counted. With a target margin of 60% on retail, the price is 6.40 divided by 0.40, which is 16.00 USD. For wholesale at a 40% margin, 6.40 divided by 0.60 gives about 10.67, so you might set 10.50 or 11.00 USD. In Farinu you enter the target as a markup over cost: a 60% margin is a 150% markup (6.40 x 2.50 = 16.00), and a 40% margin is about a 67% markup.
At 10.50 USD the wholesale margin is 4.10 USD per cake, or 39%. That is less per cake, but a standing order of 20 a week brings in 82 USD of margin with no market stall to staff.
| Price list | Price | Unit cost | Margin per cake | Margin % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Retail | 16.00 USD | 6.40 USD | 9.60 USD | 60% |
| Weekend market | 17.00 USD | 6.40 USD | 10.60 USD | 62% |
| Wholesale (cafés) | 10.50 USD | 6.40 USD | 4.10 USD | 39% |
Read next: Software for bakeries that sell wholesale, Cake pricing chart
How price lists work in Farinu
You create as many lists as you have channels and give each a name. Every sellable recipe appears on each list, and you type a price for the ones you sell there. An order from a list can only include products priced on it.
Prices are entered in your bakery's currency, read with your own number format, and a price with a misplaced separator is refused rather than guessed.
- One named list per channel: retail, wholesale, market, events or anything you need
- A price per product per list, set or cleared at any time
- Target prices or markups from your recipe costing, with an alert when a list price falls below them
- Channel costs, such as a stall fee or an app commission, can be tied to a specific list
Prices that flow into sales and orders
When you log a sale you pick the price list it came from, and Farinu fills in that price. You can still type a one-off price for a discount. When you take a custom order for a customer, the order uses a price list too, and each line keeps the price it had on the day the order was made, so a later price change never rewrites an order you already quoted.
Because each sale remembers its list, channel costs tied to that list, such as a stall fee or a commission, come off the monthly P&L as a share of that list's sales or a fixed amount.
Margin alerts when costs rise
A price that was fine in spring can lose money by autumn when butter or chocolate goes up. When you record a new ingredient price, Farinu recalculates your recipe costs and checks every price list. If a list now sells a product below its target price or markup, you get a margin alert that shows the old price, a suggested new one, and each list it would change.
You accept the suggestion and the lists update, or dismiss it and the prices stay as they are. You decide; nothing changes on its own.
Read next: An ingredient price tracker for bakers that tells you what to charge
Helpers see prices, never costs
If someone helps you at the market or with orders, give them the helper role. Helpers can read your price lists so they can log sales and take orders at the right price, but they cannot edit prices, and they never see costs or margins.
Questions
- How much lower should wholesale prices be than retail?
- There is no fixed rule. Start from your real unit cost and the margin you need on each channel. Many bakers aim for a lower margin on wholesale because of the volume and the work they no longer do, but the wholesale price should always cover your full cost, including your time.
- Can I have more than two price lists?
- Yes. Create one list per channel you sell through, such as retail, wholesale, a weekly market or events, and name each one as you like.
- What happens to my orders if I change a price?
- Orders keep the price each line had when the order was created. A new price applies to new sales and new orders only.
- Where do the costs behind each price come from?
- From recipe costing in Farinu: ingredients, packaging, sub-recipes, labour, machines and overhead. The free plan costs up to 10 recipes.
Related pages
Put every price where it belongs
Cost your recipes, set a price list for each channel and let Farinu warn you when a margin slips. Start free, then move to Team when you are ready for sales, unlimited orders and helpers.