Granola bars scale by weight, and the number that matters most is the binder: honey and syrup as a share of the dry ingredients, enough to hold the bar together without making it sticky. Mix in a planetary mixer, press every pan by weight so every bar is the same thickness, chill until firm, and cut with a guillotine or a frame, not a knife, so 2-ounce bars come out at 2 ounces. Done this way, a granola maker that pressed 3 pounds at a time makes about 2,280 bars in a day, and the cost of a 2-ounce bar falls from $1.11 to $0.49. Below is the recipe at three sizes, the steps, the loss, what a bar costs at each size, and a free scaling calculator.
The short version
- Write the recipe as percentages by weight: binder 28% in the example.
- Mix in a planetary mixer, 60 pounds at a time.
- Press every pan by weight for an even thickness.
- Chill until firm, then cut with a guillotine or frame.
- Weigh bars as they're cut; trim and crumbs are your loss.
- Nuts are most of the ingredient cost.
- TaroStack keeps the recipe by weight, takes each batch's ingredients off stock and checks its yield. More below.
The recipe, by percentage
Cache Valley Granola Co., the made-up granola maker in Logan, Utah, I use in these examples, pressed bars 3 pounds at a time until a gym chain ordered them by the case. Its recipe, weighed:
| Ingredient | % of the mix | Kitchen batch, 3 lb | One batch, 60 lb | The run, 300 lb | Cost a lb, bought in bulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oats | 35% | 1.05 lb | 21.0 lb | 105.0 lb | $0.55 |
| Almonds and cashews | 20% | 0.60 lb | 12.0 lb | 60.0 lb | $4.50 |
| Seeds | 10% | 0.30 lb | 6.00 lb | 30.0 lb | $2.50 |
| Honey | 20% | 0.60 lb | 12.0 lb | 60.0 lb | $2.80 |
| Brown rice syrup | 8% | 0.24 lb | 4.80 lb | 24.0 lb | $1.80 |
| Dried cranberries | 5% | 0.15 lb | 3.00 lb | 15.0 lb | $3.00 |
| Salt and vanilla | 2% | 0.06 lb | 1.20 lb | 6.00 lb | $2.00 |
| The whole mix | 100% | 3 lb | 60 lb | 300 lb |
The 300 pounds cost $670.95 in ingredients; almonds and cashews are a fifth of the weight and about two-fifths of the cost. What the bars sell for is in how to price granola bars.
The steps, at 300 pounds
- Toast. Oats, nuts and seeds toasted on sheet pans.
- Warm the binder. Honey, rice syrup, salt and vanilla warmed together.
- Mix. Dry and binder in the planetary mixer until every oat is coated; fruit last.
- Press by weight. The same weight into every lined pan, pressed flat.
- Chill. Until firm enough to cut cleanly.
- Cut. With a guillotine or frame into 2-ounce bars, checked on a scale.
- Wrap and code. Each bar wrapped, cases labeled with the lot and best-by.
The run takes two people about eight hours, pressing one mix while the last one chills.
What a bar costs at each size
| Per bar | Kitchen batch, 3 lb | Bulk run, 300 lb |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | $0.59 (grocery prices) | $0.29 (bought in bulk) |
| Packaging | $0.12 | $0.06 |
| Labor at $20 an hour | $0.40 (1.2 min a bar) | $0.14 (0.4 min a bar) |
| Cost of a bar | $1.11 | $0.49 |
Oats by the 50-pound bag and nuts by the case cut the ingredients by about half, and the labor falls from 1.2 minutes a bar to under half a minute. The wrapper falls too, from a printed roll. The bar business's year is in granola bar business plan, and when a co-packer makes sense in granola co-packer.
The binder at scale
Three pounds of bar mix forgives a little extra honey; sixty pounds that runs 2% heavy on binder sticks to the guillotine and the wrappers. Weighing the binder for every mix, and pressing every pan to the same weight, is what keeps a bulk run's bars the same as the kitchen's.
Get the calculator
Download the granola bar 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 mixes, what comes out after the trim and crumble loss, the bars it fills and the cost of each bar; and weigh the loss, where what went in and came out over a few batches gives your average trim and crumble loss. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Four flavors, five mixes a day, nuts from cases opened on different days, and a gym asking about one bar. A sheet can say how much honey a run needs, but not which case of almonds went into which bars.
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 oats bought by the 50-pound bag and nuts by the case, and the cost of every bar comes from what you paid. "What could I make right now" says how many runs the oats and nuts on the shelf allow.
Each run a batch. A run takes its ingredients off stock, records the lots of almonds and honey it used, and gets a lot of its own for the bars, 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 trim and crumble loss that creeps up shows in the numbers. A pan that crumbled is an adjustment with its reason, spoiled, and shows in the waste report.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients for Tuesday's run | Multiply, then check the shelf | What could I make right now |
| Which almond case went into a run | Not written down | Lots recorded on the batch |
| The real trim and crumble loss | Weighed now and then | Good and rejected on every batch |
| Crumbled bars | 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.