To price a 16-ounce bottle of kombucha you add up its full cost first: the tea, sugar and fruit 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 16-ounce bottle that costs $1.99 to make, a 50% margin after 3% fees means $4.23, rounded up to $4.50. The bottle, cap and label cost three times what the tea, sugar and fruit do, so a keg, with no bottle, keeps far more. A grocer pays less a bottle and marks it up on the shelf. In the example below, a Portland kombucha maker prices its bottles for the market and a grocer.
The short version
- Full cost = tea, sugar and fruit 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 the bottle from its packaging first: it's the biggest cost.
- Test that it stays under 0.5% alcohol; at or above that, it's an alcoholic beverage.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each bottle of kombucha from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a bottle's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Tea, sugar and fruit | 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 year with bottles, kegs and growlers is in kombucha business plan, and when a co-packer bottles it for you in kombucha co-packer.
An example: a bottle of kombucha
Brightwater Ferments, the made-up fermented food and drink maker in Portland, Oregon, I use in these examples, brews kombucha 20 gallons at a time and fills 160 16-ounce bottles:
| A 20-gallon batch, 160 bottles | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Tea, sugar and culture | $12.80 | |
| Fruit and flavor | $32.00 | |
| A batch | $44.80 |
| A bottle | Cost |
|---|---|
| Tea, sugar and fruit, $44.80 ÷ 160 | $0.28 |
| Time, 192 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 160 | $0.40 |
| Bottle, cap and label | $0.83 |
| Overhead | $0.48 |
| Full cost | $1.99 |
At a 50% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $1.99 ÷ 0.47 = $4.23, so $4.50. At $4.50 a bottle, each leaves $2.38. The market had said $4.00, which leaves $1.89. The grocer's $2.50 leaves $0.44: thin, which is why the business sells kegs to cafés too. The plan for keeping the brew safe is in kombucha haccp plan.
Get the calculator
Download the kombucha price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, 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 flavor. Fruit costs more in winter, a batch that ferments too far is poured out, and bottles left on a grocer's shelf past their date come back.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each bottle of kombucha from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each bottle of kombucha 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 of kombucha costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Bottles by batch date | Marker 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.