To price a cheesecake you add up its full cost first: the cream cheese, eggs, sugar and crust by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the box and cake board, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one cheesecake 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 9-inch New York cheesecake that costs $23.99 to make, a 50% margin after 3% fees means $51.05, rounded up to $51.25. Cream cheese is half of a cheesecake's ingredient cost, so its price sets yours. Wholesale to restaurants is a different price, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, a North Dakota home baker prices its frozen cheesecakes for the holidays.
The short version
- Full cost = ingredients a cheesecake + your time + box and board + 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 cream cheese at what you paid this month, not last year.
- A cracked top that becomes a topped cheesecake still costs the same to make.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each cheesecake from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a cheesecake's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Ingredients | The batch's cost ÷ cheesecakes a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ cheesecakes × your hourly rate |
| Box and board | Per cheesecake |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the cheesecakes you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
Whether cheesecake can be sold from home is in can you sell cheesecake from home, and what a cheesecake business looks like over a year in cheesecake business plan.
An example: a 9-inch cheesecake for the holidays
Sakakawea Sweets, the made-up home baker in Bismarck, North Dakota, bakes 9-inch New York cheesecakes six at a time and sells them frozen:
| Ingredient | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Cream cheese | 12 lb | $38.40 |
| Sugar | 3 lb | $2.40 |
| Eggs | 24 | $7.20 |
| Sour cream | 3 lb | $7.50 |
| Graham crumbs | 3 lb | $9.00 |
| Butter | 1.5 lb | $6.75 |
| Vanilla and lemon | $2.00 | |
| A batch | $73.25 |
| A cheesecake | Cost |
|---|---|
| Ingredients, $73.25 ÷ 6 | $12.21 |
| Time, 150 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 6 | $8.33 |
| Box and board | $2.25 |
| Overhead | $1.20 |
| Full cost | $23.99 |
At a 50% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $23.99 ÷ 0.47 = $51.05, so $51.25. It had been asking $45, which leaves $19.66 after fees and full cost; at $51.25 each leaves $25.72, so the holiday price went to $51. A restaurant asked for cheesecakes at $35.00, which leaves $9.96 each; North Dakota's cottage food law doesn't allow sales to a restaurant, so that order waits for a licensed kitchen. Cream cheese is $38.40 of the $73.25 batch; when it went up 40 cents a pound in November, every cheesecake cost 80 cents more. How to count your hours in the cost is in how to compute labor cost in baking.
Get the calculator
Download the cheesecake price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the cheesecakes it makes, the hands-on minutes, the box and board 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 a cheesecake on paper. In December, with cream cheese bought three times at three prices, the cost of the cheesecakes in the freezer is different from the sheet.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each cheesecake from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each cheesecake 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 cheesecake costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Which bake is oldest in the freezer | Dates in marker | Lots with best-by dates |
| 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.