To price a 12-ounce bottle of cold-pressed juice you add up its full cost first: the produce by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the bottle, cap and label, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one bottle 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 12-ounce green juice that costs $4.84 to make, a 50% margin after 3% fees means $10.29, rounded up to $10.50. A bottle takes about two pounds of produce, so produce is most of its cost, and the press and the rent are the next biggest. A café price is a different number, set so it still covers the full cost with something left; selling to cafés also brings FDA's juice HACCP rule. In the example below, a San Diego juice bar prices its green juice for the counter and checks a café's offer.
The short version
- Full cost = produce a bottle + your time + bottle, cap 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.
- Price from the pounds of produce in a bottle: about two.
- Selling juice to a café brings the juice HACCP rule; check that first.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each bottle from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a bottle's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Produce | The batch's cost ÷ bottles a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ bottles × your hourly rate |
| Bottle, cap and label | Per bottle |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the bottles you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
The bar's year is in juice business plan, and the warning its counter bottles carry in juice warning label.
An example: a 12-ounce bottle
Sunset Cliffs Juice Co., the made-up juice bar in San Diego, California, I use in these examples, presses 80 pounds of produce into 40 bottles of green juice at a time:
| A batch of 40 bottles | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Kale | 15 lb | $30.00 |
| Cucumber | 20 lb | $18.00 |
| Celery | 20 lb | $20.00 |
| Green apples | 20 lb | $22.00 |
| Lemons | 4 lb | $6.00 |
| Ginger | 1 lb | $3.50 |
| A batch | $99.50 |
| A bottle | Cost |
|---|---|
| Produce, $99.50 ÷ 40 | $2.49 |
| Time, 90 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 40 | $0.75 |
| Bottle, cap and label | $0.40 |
| Overhead | $1.20 |
| Full cost | $4.84 |
At a 50% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $4.84 ÷ 0.47 = $10.29, so $10.50. At $10.50 a bottle, each leaves $5.35. It had been charging $10.00, which leaves $4.86. A café offered $6.50, which leaves $1.47, before the juice HACCP plan and processing that selling to a café would bring, so the café bottles go through the co-packer instead. The margins on each product are in juice profit margin.
Get the calculator
Download the juice price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's produce, amounts and costs, the bottles it makes, the hands-on minutes, the bottle 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 batch. Kale that doubles in price after a storm, a press that yields less from softer apples, and bottles thrown out at close change what each bottle really cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each bottle from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each bottle 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 bottle costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Juice thrown out at close | Not counted | Waste by 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.