To price a prepared meal you add up its full cost first: the protein, rice and vegetables by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the container and label, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one meal 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 chicken, rice and roasted vegetable meal that costs $5.97 to make, a 45% margin after 3% fees means $11.48, rounded up to $11.50. Kitchen rent is a big share: five hours in a shared kitchen at $25 an hour is $2.08 a meal before anything is cooked. Wholesale to a gym or café fridge is a different price, set so it still covers the full cost with something left. In the example below, a Tampa meal prep company prices its meals for subscribers and a gym fridge.
The short version
- Full cost = ingredients a meal + your time + container 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.
- Put kitchen rent into overhead, divided by the meals a shift makes.
- Price each menu on its own; salmon and chicken don't cost the same.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each meal from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a meal's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Ingredients | The batch's cost ÷ meals a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ meals × your hourly rate |
| Container and label | Per meal |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the meals you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
What a meal prep business looks like over a year is in meal prep business plan, and the license in meal prep business license.
An example: a chicken and rice meal
Fuel Box Meals, a made-up meal prep company in Tampa, Florida, cooks 60 meals in a five-hour shift at a shared kitchen:
| Ingredient | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken thighs | 15 lb | $45.00 |
| Rice | 10 lb | $10.00 |
| Vegetables | 15 lb | $22.50 |
| Sauces and spices | $8.00 | |
| Oil | $3.00 | |
| A batch | $88.50 |
| A meal | Cost |
|---|---|
| Ingredients, $88.50 ÷ 60 | $1.48 |
| Time, 300 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 60 | $1.67 |
| Container and label | $0.55 |
| Overhead | $2.28 |
| Full cost | $5.97 |
At a 45% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $5.97 ÷ 0.52 = $11.48, so $11.50. At $11.50 a meal, each leaves $5.18. It had been asking $12, which leaves $5.67, and kept $12 for subscribers. A gym asked to stock its fridge at $8.50 a meal, which leaves $2.27, and takes 40 a week. A salmon meal, with $3.80 of fish in it, gets its own price. What it takes to start is in meal prep business startup cost.
Get the calculator
Download the meal prep price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the meals it makes, the hands-on minutes, the container 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 a meal on paper. A week when chicken jumps a dollar a pound, and a shift that runs long, change what each meal really cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each meal from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each meal 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 meal costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Meals left unsold | Not counted | Waste with a 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.