To price a half-pound slab of fudge you add up its full cost first: the chocolate, cream, butter and sugar by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the box and label, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one slab 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 half-pound slab of chocolate fudge that costs $5.93 to make, a 50% margin after 3% fees means $12.61, rounded up to $12.75. Chocolate and cream are most of fudge's cost, and a batch that grains or won't set goes in the bin, so the price has to carry the occasional failure. Wholesale to gift shops is a different price, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, a fudge kitchen in a Michigan tourist town prices its half-pound slabs for the summer.
The short version
- Full cost = ingredients a slab + your time + box 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.
- Weigh chocolate and cream by the batch; count the batches that fail.
- Round up to a price that's easy to say.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each slab from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a slab's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Ingredients | The batch's cost ÷ slabs a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ slabs × your hourly rate |
| Box and label | Per slab |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the slabs you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
What a candy business's year looks like is in candy business plan, and how a price becomes a margin in what is a good profit margin for a food product.
An example: a half-pound slab for the summer
Straits Fudge Kitchen, a made-up fudge shop in Mackinaw City, Michigan, cooks chocolate fudge six pounds at a time and cuts it into half-pound slabs:
| Ingredient | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Sugar | 4 lb | $3.20 |
| Heavy cream | 2 qt | $9.00 |
| Butter | 1 lb | $4.50 |
| Chocolate | 2 lb | $12.00 |
| Vanilla and salt | $1.00 | |
| A batch | $29.70 |
| A slab | Cost |
|---|---|
| Ingredients, $29.70 ÷ 12 | $2.48 |
| Time, 90 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 12 | $2.50 |
| Box and label | $0.45 |
| Overhead | $0.50 |
| Full cost | $5.93 |
At a 50% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $5.93 ÷ 0.47 = $12.61, so $12.75. The kitchen had been charging $12, which leaves $5.72 after fees and full cost; at $12.75 each slab leaves $6.44, so the summer price went up. A gift shop asked for slabs at $8.00, which leaves $1.84 a slab after full cost: thin, so the kitchen offered $9 with a minimum of two dozen, which leaves $2.81. About one batch in fifteen grains and goes in the bin; spread over the rest, the lost ingredients add about 18 cents to each slab, which the price covers. How the slabs are wrapped is in how to package fudge for sale.
Get the calculator
Download the fudge price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the slabs it makes, the hands-on minutes, the box 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 slab on paper. By August, with chocolate bought at two prices and a few batches lost to humid days, the cost of the slabs going out the door is different from the sheet.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each slab from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each slab is a recipe, with unit conversion from the case 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 slab costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Batches that fail | Not counted | Waste with a reason |
| 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.