Brownie Business Plan, With a Projection

A brownie business plan comes down to bakes and boxes. A large fudge brownie has about 54 cents of ingredients in it, and 79 cents of time when two pans go into one bake, so it sells for $3.75 at a market and still leaves half the price. The question is where to sell it: one at a time at markets, nine at a time in gift boxes, by the dozen to cafés, or by the tray to parties. Each pays differently for the same pan. In the example below, a brownie bakery in Milwaukee sells all four, and ends its first year about $8,600 ahead on $52,000 of sales, with every hour paid at $20. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, the first year month by month, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the business in a paragraph: the brownies, where they sell, the goals.
• Cost a brownie from the pan: ingredients, wrapper, time at two pans a bake, fees.
• Bake two pans at once; it takes a dollar off a large brownie's price.
• Gift boxes and party trays earn the most for each order; cafés buy many for little.
• Ship gift boxes in packaging that keeps them fresh, and charge for it.
• Date every bake, because brownies are best within days.
• TaroStack costs every bake from what you paid for its ingredients and puts the earliest dates first on the picking list. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Lakeshore Brownie Co., a made-up bakery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I use in these examples, writes:

Lakeshore Brownie Co. bakes fudge brownies, blondies and salted caramel brownies in a shared commercial kitchen, and sells them at Milwaukee markets and pop-ups, in gift boxes shipped or picked up, to about eight cafés, and by the tray for offices and parties. In its first year it aims to sell 600 brownies a month at markets and 80 gift boxes.

Part 2: what a brownie costs

The oven, power and kitchen are in the fixed costs here, not in each brownie. How to put your time into any baked good is in how to compute labor cost in baking.

Part 3: customers and prices

In a month at full speed the market brownies bring $1,224 of the $3,540 of contribution, the gift boxes $1,213, the party trays $683 and the cafés $420. The cafés take 500 brownies a month and leave 84 cents each; they're worth it only because they share bakes that would happen anyway. Café pricing is in how to price baked goods for wholesale, and shipping food that has to arrive fresh in shipping perishable food for a small business.

Part 4: the first year, month by month

Fixed costs are $1,295 every month: the shared commercial kitchen ($700), market and pop-up fees ($250), insurance ($60), the website and online shop ($50), ads ($200), and software and card fees ($35). Sales start at 15% of full speed:

The year's sales are $51,994 and the profit $8,552, with every hour paid at $20. The first four months lose money, $1,972 at the lowest, which the working cash covers. A full month is about 95 hours, most of it at two bakes a week. More gift boxes and trays, not more cafés, is where a better year comes from.

Part 5: the startup budget

The $4,500 spent before working cash is earned back in month 11, when the cash reaches $6,307.

Get the template

Download the brownie business plan workbook. Four sheets: your brownies, boxes and trays with price, variable cost and a month at full speed; the first year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Three kinds of brownie baked twice a week, gift boxes assembled from all three, eight cafés with standing orders, party trays booked weeks ahead, and chocolate that costs more this autumn than last spring. A notebook can't say what this week's brownies cost, which bake a café's brownies came from, or whether there are enough salted caramel for Friday's boxes.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack costs every bake from what you paid for its ingredients and puts the earliest dates first on the picking list.

Every bake costed. Each brownie is a recipe, so each bake takes the chocolate, butter and flour off stock and is costed from what they cost, and a supplier's chocolate price rises show up in the price-creep report.

Gift boxes from what's baked. A gift box is a recipe of three of each brownie, a box and tissue, so assembling boxes takes them off stock, and "what could I make right now" says how many boxes the brownies on hand allow.

Earliest first. Each bake gets a lot and a date, recorded automatically, and the picking list for the day's café orders and boxes puts the earliest dates first.

Recipes, costing, lots and sales orders are on every plan, from $49 a month. The first 30 days are free, with no credit card. If you'd like a hand setting up, ask, and we'll do it with you.

Questions people also ask

Is a brownie business profitable?

It can be. In the example, a brownie bakery ends its first year about $8,600 ahead on $52,000 of sales, with every hour paid at $20, and gift boxes and trays earning the most for each order.

How much should I sell brownies for?

In the example, $3.75 for a large brownie at a market, $36 for a gift box of nine, $2.50 to a café and $42 for a tray of 24 small ones. Cost yours from your own bake before copying these.

How much does it cost to start a brownie business?

In the example, $7,500, with a used mixer, the first ingredients and packaging, and $3,000 of working cash the biggest parts. The kitchen is rented by the month.

Can I sell brownies to coffee shops?

Yes, and in the example they buy the most and pay the least: $2.50 a brownie, leaving 84 cents each. They work best when they share bakes you'd do anyway.