To price a 2-ounce granola bar you add up its full cost first: the oats, nuts, seeds and honey by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the wrapper, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one bar 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 2-ounce bar that costs $1.42 to make, a 55% margin after 3% fees means $3.38, rounded up to $3.50. Nuts are most of a bar's ingredient cost, and pressing, cutting and wrapping by hand take more than a minute a bar. A café or gym pays less and marks it up at its counter. In the example below, a Utah granola maker prices its bars for markets and a gym.
The short version
- Full cost = oats, nuts, seeds and honey a bar + your time + wrapper + 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 each bar: 2 ounces is 2 ounces every time.
- Wrapping by hand is the slow part; count it.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each bar from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a bar's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Oats, nuts, seeds and honey | The batch's cost ÷ bars a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ bars × your hourly rate |
| Wrapper | Per bar |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the bars you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
The bar business's year is in granola bar business plan, and the loose granola in how to price granola.
An example: a granola bar
Cache Valley Granola Co., the made-up granola maker in Logan, Utah, I use in these examples, presses, cuts and wraps 300 bars at a time:
| A batch of 300 bars | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Oats, nuts, seeds and honey | $195.00 | |
| A batch | $195.00 |
| A bar | Cost |
|---|---|
| Oats, nuts, seeds and honey, $195.00 ÷ 300 | $0.65 |
| Time, 360 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 300 | $0.40 |
| Wrapper | $0.12 |
| Overhead | $0.25 |
| Full cost | $1.42 |
At a 55% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $1.42 ÷ 0.42 = $3.38, so $3.50. At $3.50 a bar, each leaves $1.98. The market table had said $3.00, which leaves $1.49. A gym's $2.00 leaves $0.52 a bar: thin, so the gym gets bars by the case of 48, delivered with the cafés' orders. When a co-packer makes sense for bars is in granola co-packer.
Get the calculator
Download the granola bar price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the bars it makes, the hands-on minutes, the wrapper 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 recipe. Almond prices move by the harvest, a batch that crumbles in the cutting gives fewer bars, and each flavor needs its own cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each bar from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each bar 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 bar costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Bars by batch date | Tape on the case | 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.