How to Price Homemade Jerky, With a Calculator

To price jerky, start from the yield: drying takes out more than half the weight, so a pound of jerky starts as more than two pounds of raw beef. Work out what an ounce of finished jerky costs in meat and marinade, add the bag, your time and the inspected kitchen you make it in, and price for the margin you want after fees. In the example below, 40 pounds of eye of round at $5.50 a pound, trimmed and dried, become 16.2 pounds of jerky, about 91 cents an ounce in meat and marinade. A 3-ounce bag costs $5.23 to make and sells for $10.50, $56 a pound; sold wholesale at $6.50, the same bag leaves $1.17. Below is the yield, the cost of a bag, retail and wholesale, the rules for selling jerky, and a free calculator.

The short version

• Yield first: trimmed raw beef dries to about 45% of its weight, so a pound of jerky takes about 2.5 pounds raw.
• Cost an ounce of jerky in meat and marinade, then a bag.
• Add the bag and label, your hands-on time, and the inspected kitchen or co-packer.
• Price = cost ÷ (1 − margin − card fees), rounded up.
• Wholesale jerky leaves little at small scale; price it from the cost.
• Jerky for sale generally has to be made under USDA or state inspection, not in a home kitchen.
• TaroStack costs every batch at its real yield and keeps each meat lot. More below.

The yield

Cedar Hollow Jerky, a made-up jerky maker in Bozeman, Montana, I use in these examples, makes original beef jerky from eye of round:

The yield moves with the cut, the thickness of the slice and how dry you take it, so weigh a few batches before and after and use your own number. How a weight loss turns into a cost per finished unit is the same arithmetic as roasting coffee, in roast loss and cost per bag.

What a bag costs

With a 45% margin wanted after 3% card fees, the price is $5.23 ÷ (1 − 0.45 − 0.03) = $10.05, rounded up to $10.50, or $56 a pound. How to put your own time into a cost is in how to compute labor cost in baking.

Retail and wholesale

A shop that sells the bag for $10.50 needs to buy it at about $6.50, which leaves the maker $1.17. Wholesale jerky starts to work with bigger batches, where the labor and kitchen time per bag fall, and with beef bought by the case. Until then, markets, online orders and gift boxes carry the margin. How to set a wholesale price that still pays is in how to price handmade items for wholesale.

The rules for selling jerky

Jerky is a meat product, and meat products sold to the public generally have to be made under USDA inspection, or under a state inspection program for sales within that state. A federal exemption covers operations of the kind retail stores and restaurants carry out, selling in normal retail quantities to their own customers (9 CFR 303.1). Cottage food laws generally don't cover meat, so homemade jerky made in a home kitchen isn't something to sell. Small makers use a shared inspected kitchen, a meat processor's facility, or a co-packer with an inspected plant; how to find one is in how to find a co-packer. Check with your state's meat inspection program first. This is general information, not legal advice.

Get the calculator

Download the jerky pricing calculator. Type your batch into the shaded cells: raw meat price, trim, marinade, dried yield, batch size, bag size and cost, hands-on hours and rate, inspected kitchen or co-packer cost per finished pound, card fees, margin and a wholesale price. It works out the dried weight, the bags, the cost of an ounce and a bag, the retail price, the price a pound, and what wholesale leaves. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.

Where this stops working

Three flavors, beef bought from two suppliers at prices that change every order, yields that vary batch to batch, and bags going to markets, an online shop and a few shops. The cost of a bag is a guess, and if a supplier recalls a lot of beef, a notebook can't say which batches used it or who got the bags.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack costs every batch at its real yield and keeps every meat lot.

Batches at their real yield. Each flavor is a recipe with the yield it should give, and units convert: beef bought by the case, weighed by the pound. Recording a batch takes the beef, marinade and bags off stock from the lots used, at what you paid, and divides by the bags that came out, so a batch that dried down further shows in its cost. Recipe truth shows, from your own batches, whether the yield you price on is the yield you get.

Meat lots to customers. Every batch goes into a lot with its code and best-by date, and one report walks a beef lot to every batch and every customer who got bags from it.

And the price of beef. A price-creep report per supplier shows whose prices are rising, and margins are reported by product and by customer, so the wholesale price that's slipping shows up.

Recipes, batches, lots, recalls 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 jerky?

Cost a bag from the raw meat up, with the yield, the bag, your time and the inspected kitchen, then divide by one minus your margin and fees. In the example, a 3-ounce bag costing $5.23 sells for $10.50, $56 a pound.

How much beef does it take to make a pound of jerky?

In the example, about 2.5 pounds of raw eye of round, trimmed and dried to 45% of its trimmed weight. Weigh your own batches to find yours.

Can I sell homemade jerky?

Jerky made in a home kitchen generally can't be sold: meat products need USDA or state inspection, and cottage food laws generally don't cover meat. Small makers use an inspected shared kitchen, a processor or a co-packer.

How much does jerky cost to make per pound?

In the example, about $14.57 of meat and marinade a pound of finished jerky, and about $27.88 a pound with bags, labor and inspected kitchen time.