To make baby food in bulk, write each puree by weight as percentages, steam the produce in a kettle, puree it smooth, cool it fast, portion it into cube trays by weight, and blast freeze it. The difference from other purees is the care around the produce: babies eat a lot of a little, so every lot of produce is traced to the trays it made, and lab tests for lead and other metals are part of the cost. Done this way, a baby food maker that made 7 trays at a time makes 600 on a production day, and the cost of a tray falls from $8.59 to $2.81. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the loss, what a tray costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.
The short version
- Write each puree as percentages of the weight.
- Steam the produce in a kettle until soft, then puree smooth.
- Cool fast before portioning.
- Portion 2-ounce cubes by weight; six to a tray.
- Blast freeze, then sleeve and label each tray with its lot.
- Test produce by lot for lead and other metals, and keep the lots on every batch.
- TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.
The recipe, by percentage
Thimble Islands Kitchen, the made-up baby food maker in Branford, Connecticut, I use in these examples, made its sweet potato and apple puree 7 trays at a time until a grocer ordered 600 a week. The recipe, weighed:
| Ingredient | % of the mix | Kitchen batch, 6 lb | One batch, 135 lb | The run, 529 lb | Cost a lb, bought in bulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sweet potatoes, peeled | 60% | 3.60 lb | 81.0 lb | 317.4 lb | $1.40 |
| Apples, peeled and cored | 30% | 1.80 lb | 40.5 lb | 158.7 lb | $1.60 |
| Water | 10% | 0.60 lb | 13.5 lb | 52.9 lb | $0.00 |
| The whole mix | 100% | 6 lb | 135 lb | 529 lb |
The 529 pounds cost $698.28 in ingredients, the sweet potatoes nearly two-thirds of it. A tray is six 2-ounce cubes, 12 ounces, from about 14 ounces of produce and water before cooking. The testing budget and FDA's lead action levels are in baby food business plan.
The steps, at 529 pounds
- Wash, peel and cut by weight. Sweet potatoes and apples prepared and weighed against the recipe for each kettle.
- Steam in the kettle. About 135 pounds a cook, until soft enough to puree smooth.
- Puree. With an immersion or inline blender, water added by weight for the texture.
- Cool fast. Shallow pans into the chiller, temperatures logged, before portioning.
- Portion by weight. 2-ounce cubes into silicone trays, checked on a scale.
- Blast freeze. Six loads for the run, then the cubes popped out and sleeved six to a tray.
- Label with a lot code. Every tray carries the run's lot, the date and "Keep frozen"; the lot ties it to the produce lots behind it.
The run takes about 33 hours of labor on a production day, with three people.
What a tray costs at each size
| Per tray | Kitchen batch, 6 lb | Bulk run, 529 lb |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $2.12 (grocery prices) | $1.16 (bought in bulk) |
| Packaging | $0.80 | $0.55 |
| Labor at $20 an hour | $5.67 (17 min a tray) | $1.10 (3.3 min a tray) |
| Cost of a tray | $8.59 | $2.81 |
Produce by the case cuts the ingredients by nearly half, and the labor falls from 17 minutes a tray to about 3. On top of this, the run's lab tests and kitchen time add about 42 cents a tray. When a co-packer starts to make sense is in baby food co-packer, and the margins in baby food profit margin.
Testing by lot
The lab tests are planned by ingredient and supplier: a new sweet potato grower gets tested before their potatoes go into trays, and results are kept by lot. When a result comes back high, the lots on each batch say which trays it touched, and those trays come back; the rest stay on the shelf.
Get the calculator
Download the baby food scaling calculator. Two sheets: scale the recipe, where you type each ingredient's percentage and cost a pound and the raw mix you want, and each ingredient's weight for the run fills in, with the kettle cooks, freezer loads, what comes out after the cooking loss, the trays it fills and the cost of each tray; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average cooking loss. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Eight purees, a production day every week, produce from four farms, and lab results arriving days after the trays are made. A sheet can say how many sweet potatoes a run needs, but not which farm's potatoes went into which trays, or which trays to pull when a result comes back high.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield.
The recipe in the units you use. A recipe holds each ingredient by weight, with sweet potatoes bought by the 40-pound case and used by the pound, and the cost of every tray comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the sweet potatoes, apples and trays on the shelf allow.
Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of sweet potatoes and apples it used, and gets a lot of its own for the trays, with how much came out good, how much was rejected and the labor minutes.
Yield checked from history. From your own batch history, TaroStack says whether a recipe yields what it claims and which ingredient's quantity is off, so a cooking loss that creeps up shows in the numbers. A case of apples that bruised is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients for Wednesday's run | Multiply, then check the shelf | What could I make right now |
| Which sweet potatoes went into a run | Not written down | Lots recorded on the batch |
| The real cooking loss | Weighed now and then | Good and rejected on every batch |
| Bruised apples | Thrown out, forgotten | Adjustment with a reason |
Recipes, batches, lots and yield 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.