How to Price Homemade Cinnamon Rolls, With a Calculator

To price homemade cinnamon rolls, add up what one roll really costs, dough, filling, frosting, its share of the box, your hands-on time and a little overhead, then divide by one minus the margin you want. The ingredients are the easy part, about 61 cents a roll for a classic with cream cheese frosting. The time isn't: a pan of 12 takes about an hour and a quarter of mixing, rolling, cutting and frosting, which at $20 an hour is more than $2 a roll on its own. Bake three pans in one go and the time drops to $1.11 a roll. In the example below, a large roll costs $2.17 from a three-pan bake and sells for $5, or $30 a half dozen, at a 56% margin; from a single pan, the same roll needs $7. Below is the cost of a pan, the time, the price, what changes it, and a free calculator.

The short version

• Cost a whole pan: dough, filling, frosting. In the example, $7.34 for 12, or 61 cents a roll.
• Add the box: a six-roll box at $1.20 is 20 cents a roll.
• Add your hands-on time, not the rising: $20 an hour is $1.11 a roll when you bake three pans at once.
• Add overhead, about 25 cents a roll for the oven, power and a share of rent.
• Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin). At 55%, $2.17 becomes $4.83, rounded to $5.
• Baking more pans at once lowers the price you need more than cheaper butter does.
• TaroStack costs every bake from what you paid for its ingredients. More below.

What a pan costs

Red Clay Bakehouse, a made-up bakery in Athens, Georgia, I use in these examples, makes large classic rolls with cream cheese frosting, 12 to a 9 by 13 pan:

Butter is in all three parts and is the line most worth watching: it's about a third of the pan. Price each ingredient by what you actually used, not by the package; how to turn a package price into a cost per cup or gram is in how to calculate cost per ounce.

Your time

Rising takes hours but costs nothing; you're doing something else. The hands-on time is what counts: making the dough, rolling and filling, cutting, panning, baking and frosting.

Most of the work is the same for one pan or three: one dough, one mess, one cleanup. That's why a baker who makes a single pan to order is pricing their time at its most expensive. How to put labor into any baked good is in how to compute labor cost in baking.

The price

The three-pan price is the one to put on the menu, and the bake schedule should follow it: take orders for a set bake day, so every order goes into a three-pan bake rather than one pan at a time. How the same arithmetic works for the rest of a bakery's menu is in how to price baked goods.

What changes the number

Frosting. A simple glaze instead of cream cheese frosting costs about a quarter as much, and in some states it's the difference between a roll that can be sold from a home kitchen and one that can't: cottage food rules are about foods that are safe at room temperature, and cream cheese frosting may not count. Check your state's list before you sell from home; how cottage food works is in how to start a cottage food business.

Size. A giant roll from a 9-inch pan of six uses the same work for half as many rolls; price it as two.

Add-ons. Pecans, caramel or a second layer of frosting add both cost and time; price each as an add-on per roll so the base price stays simple.

Get the calculator

Download the cinnamon roll pricing calculator. Type your own bake into the shaded cells: rolls in a pan, pans baked in one go, what the dough, filling and frosting cost for a pan, the box, your hands-on minutes for the whole bake, what your time is worth, overhead per roll and the margin you want. It works out the full cost of a roll and the price per roll, half dozen and dozen. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

The calculator is one recipe at one set of prices. A bakery with classic, caramel pecan, orange and seasonal rolls, a dozen ingredients shared between them and butter that changes price every few weeks has a dozen calculators, all out of date. And when the cream cheese runs out on the morning of a big order, no spreadsheet saw it coming.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps every recipe costed from what you actually paid.

Recipes with their parts. A roll is a recipe of dough, filling and frosting, and each of those can be a recipe of its own, so the frosting is costed once and used in every roll that has it. Units convert: butter bought by the case, used by the gram.

Each bake at what it used. Recording a bake takes the ingredients off stock at what you paid, so the cost of a roll follows the price of butter without anyone updating a sheet, and margins are reported by product and by customer.

And the cream cheese before it runs out. The reorder list works in days of cover at the rate each ingredient really moves, so the big Saturday order doesn't find an empty fridge.

Recipes, batches and margins by product and customer 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.

Questions people also ask

How much should I charge for homemade cinnamon rolls?

Work out the full cost of a roll, ingredients, box, your time and overhead, and divide by one minus your margin. In the example, a large roll costing $2.17 sells for $5, or $30 a half dozen.

How much does it cost to make a cinnamon roll?

In the example, 61 cents of ingredients for a large roll with cream cheese frosting, and $2.17 in all once the box, your time and overhead are counted.

Should I charge more for cinnamon rolls made to order?

If one order means baking one pan on its own, yes: in the example the time alone costs $2.08 a roll instead of $1.11. Or set a bake day and bake orders together.

Can I sell cinnamon rolls from home?

Under many cottage food laws, yes, but cream cheese frosting can be a problem because it may need refrigeration. Check your state's list of allowed foods, or use a glaze.