To price a 16-ounce bottle of barbecue sauce you add up its full cost first: the tomato paste, vinegar, sugar and spices by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the bottle, cap and label, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one bottle costs you. Then set the price so that, after card and selling fees, it leaves the margin you want: price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate). For a 16-ounce bottle that costs $3.17 to make, a 55% margin after 3% fees means $7.54, rounded up to $8.00. The bottle, cap and label cost more than the sauce in them, so the bottle supplier's price matters more than the tomatoes'. A grocer pays less and marks it up on its shelf. In the example below, a South Carolina sauce maker prices its bottles for direct sales and grocers.
The short version
- Full cost = tomato, vinegar, sugar and spices a bottle + your time + bottle, cap and label + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Price from the bottle first: it costs more than the sauce.
- Count the kitchen day's rent in the overhead.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each bottle of sauce from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a bottle's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Tomato, vinegar, sugar and spices | The batch's cost ÷ bottles a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ bottles × your hourly rate |
| Bottle, cap and label | Per bottle |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the bottles you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
What each channel earns is in bbq sauce profit margin, and making it by the kettle in how to make bbq sauce in bulk.
An example: a bottle of sauce
Congaree Smokehouse Sauce Co., the made-up sauce maker in Columbia, South Carolina, I use in these examples, fills about 600 16-ounce bottles in a kitchen day:
| A day of 600 bottles | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Tomato paste, vinegar, sugar and molasses | $480.00 | |
| Spices and Worcestershire | $90.00 | |
| A batch | $570.00 |
| A bottle | Cost |
|---|---|
| Tomato, vinegar, sugar and spices, $570.00 ÷ 600 | $0.95 |
| Time, 1,200 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 600 | $0.67 |
| Bottle, cap and label | $1.05 |
| Overhead | $0.50 |
| Full cost | $3.17 |
At a 55% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $3.17 ÷ 0.42 = $7.54, so $8.00. At $8.00 a bottle, each leaves $4.59. Online and at events it had sold for $7.00, which leaves $3.62. Grocers at $5.50 leave $2.17 a bottle, and take most of the 3,000 bottles a month. When a co-packer's cost beats the kitchen day is in sauce co-packer.
Get the calculator
Download the bbq sauce price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the bottles it makes, the hands-on minutes, the bottle and overhead, your hourly rate, card fees and the margin you want; the full cost, the price for your margin rounded up, and what a wholesale price and a test price leave fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
The calculator prices one kitchen day. Bottle prices move with every order, a batch cooks down further than the last, and a flavor with bourbon or honey costs more.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each bottle of sauce from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each bottle of sauce is a recipe, with unit conversion from the case or sack to the gram.
True cost from the batch. Each batch takes ingredients at their real cost, from the deliveries they came from, so a price rise shows up in the next batch.
Price creep. A price-creep report per supplier shows which ingredient is quietly costing more.
| The job | Spreadsheet | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| What a bottle of sauce costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Bottles by batch date | Code on the cap | Lots with dates, oldest first |
| An ingredient creeping up | Noticed at tax time | A price-creep report |
| Whether wholesale still pays | A guess | Margins on real cost |
Recipes, batches and true cost 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.