How much should I charge for homemade cookies?

Add the full cost of a batch, including your time and a share of fixed costs, divide by the number of cookies, then divide by one minus your target margin. In the example above, a cookie costing $1.75 sells for $2.50 at a 30% margin.

How do I price cookies by the dozen?

Work out the price of one cookie, then multiply by twelve. In the example, $2.50 a cookie is $30 a dozen. If you offer a discount on dozens, check the margin that is left.

Should I charge for my time if I bake from home?

Yes. Labor is usually the largest part of a cookie's cost. Leaving it out makes a price look profitable when it only covers ingredients.

Is this cookie pricing calculator free?

Yes. The formula and example here are free to use, and Farinu costs up to 10 recipes on its free plan, with up to 50 orders a month. The Team plan adds unlimited orders, sales, stock and helpers.

Free tool

Cookie pricing calculator

A cookie pricing calculator runs one sum: add the full cost of a batch (ingredients, packaging, your time, oven and a share of fixed costs), divide by the number of cookies, then divide that cost per cookie by one minus the margin you want to keep. A batch of 24 that costs $42.00 to make is $1.75 a cookie, and at a 30% margin it sells for $2.50 each, or $30 a dozen. The worked example below shows every number, so you can run the same sum for your own cookies.

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Worked example: 24 double chocolate cookies

Example numbers for a home baker. Swap in your own prices, hours and margin.

Ingredients (flour, butter, sugars, eggs, cocoa, chocolate chunks, vanilla): $7.20
Packaging (24 bags and labels): $4.80
Your time: 1.5 hours at $18 an hour: $27.00
Oven: two trays, 30 minutes: $0.40
Share of monthly fixed costs: $2.60
Total batch cost: $42.00
Cost per cookie: $42.00 / 24: $1.75
Target margin: 30%
Suggested price: $1.75 / (1 - 0.30): $2.50 a cookie ($30 a dozen)

Leave out your time and the same cookie looks like it costs $0.63, which is how many bakers end up charging $1 a cookie and paying themselves almost nothing.

The cookie pricing calculator formula, step by step

Cookies are baked in batches, so price the batch first and split it afterwards. The steps are the same whether you use a spreadsheet, a notebook or an app.

Ingredients: for each one, divide what you paid by the pack size, then multiply by what the recipe uses.
Packaging: bags, boxes, ribbon, stickers and labels for the whole batch.
Labor: mixing, chilling, scooping, baking, decorating, packing and cleaning, times the hourly rate you would pay a helper.
Machines: oven and mixer time, priced from the energy they use.
Overhead: rent, insurance, phone and other monthly costs, divided by the hours you bake in a month, times this batch's hours.
Cost per cookie: total batch cost divided by the cookies you actually sell, not the ones you broke or ate.
Price: cost per cookie divided by (1 minus your target margin), then rounded to a price that is easy to say.

How to price cookies: ingredient cost per cookie

Ingredient cost is easy to get wrong because you buy in bags and use in grams. Example: a 5 lb bag of flour at $4.00 costs about $0.0018 a gram, so the 280 g in a batch is $0.49. A 1 lb pack of butter at $5.00 costs about $0.011 a gram, so 225 g is $2.48. Do that for every ingredient and add them up.

Butter and chocolate are usually the biggest lines. When their prices go up, your cookie cost goes up with them, even if the recipe never changes, which is why a price you set last year may no longer carry the margin you think.

What most bakers leave out

In the example, ingredients are $7.20 of a $42.00 batch. Your time is $27.00. Cookies look cheap to make because the dough is cheap, but scooping, baking in rounds and bagging two dozen cookies takes real hours.

If the price that comes out is more than your customers will pay, that is useful information too. Bake bigger batches so the hours spread over more cookies, freeze dough to bake on demand, simplify the decoration or drop the cookie from your menu instead of selling it at a loss.

Decorated sugar cookies cost more time

Royal icing cookies use the same formula, but the labor line grows fast. Example: a dozen decorated sugar cookies with $5.40 of ingredients and icing, $3.60 of bags and a box, 3 hours of your time at $18 ($54.00), $0.30 of oven and $2.70 of overhead cost $66.00, or $5.50 each. At a 30% margin that is $7.86 a cookie, which you might round to $8.

That is why decorated sets are usually priced per cookie with a minimum order, and why a simple design and a detailed one should not have the same price.

Let Farinu do the sum for every cookie

The sum is simple. Keeping it current is not. Farinu costs each recipe from its ingredients, sub-recipes like dough or icing, packaging, labor, machines and overhead, and suggests a price from the target markup or target price you set. Farinu asks for a markup rather than a margin: a 30% margin is a 42.9% markup, and $1.75 x 1.429 = $2.50.

When an ingredient price rises, Farinu recosts every recipe that uses it and raises a margin alert for the cookies a price list now sells below target. You can keep retail and wholesale price lists. Costing is free for up to 10 recipes, and on the Team plan the AI assistant can import your recipes from a photo or a spreadsheet.

Questions

How much should I charge for homemade cookies?: Add the full cost of a batch, including your time and a share of fixed costs, divide by the number of cookies, then divide by one minus your target margin. In the example above, a cookie costing $1.75 sells for $2.50 at a 30% margin.
How do I price cookies by the dozen?: Work out the price of one cookie, then multiply by twelve. In the example, $2.50 a cookie is $30 a dozen. If you offer a discount on dozens, check the margin that is left.
Should I charge for my time if I bake from home?: Yes. Labor is usually the largest part of a cookie's cost. Leaving it out makes a price look profitable when it only covers ingredients.
Is this cookie pricing calculator free?: Yes. The formula and example here are free to use, and Farinu costs up to 10 recipes on its free plan, with up to 50 orders a month. The Team plan adds unlimited orders, sales, stock and helpers.

Price every cookie from its real cost

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