How to Price Pizza: A 14-Inch Pie, With a Calculator

To price a 14-inch cheese pie you add up its full cost first: the dough, sauce and cheese by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the box, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one pie 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 14-inch cheese pie that costs $7.35 to make, a 50% margin after 3% fees means $15.64, rounded up to $16.00. Cheese is the biggest cost in a pie, more than the dough and sauce together; the rent and oven gas behind every pie are the overhead. A big order of 20 pies is priced lower a pie. In the example below, a Newark pizza shop prices its cheese pie for the counter and a school order.

The short version

• Full cost = dough, sauce and cheese a pie + your time + box + 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 cheese: weigh what goes on a pie.
• Spread the rent and oven gas over the pies you sell.
• Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
• TaroStack costs each pie from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.

What goes into a pie's cost

The shop's year is in pizza shop business plan, and pizzas sold frozen in frozen pizza business plan.

An example: a cheese pie

Ironbound Pizza Co., the made-up pizza shop in Newark, New Jersey, I use in these examples, makes about 60 14-inch cheese pies on a Friday night:

At a 50% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $7.35 ÷ 0.47 = $15.64, so $16.00. At $16.00 a pie, each leaves $8.17. The menu had said $14.00, which leaves $6.23. A school's order of 20 pies at $13.00 leaves $5.26 a pie: less, on a weekday afternoon when the oven is otherwise quiet. Selling dough balls to take home is in how to package pizza dough for sale.

Get the calculator

Download the pizza price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the pies it makes, the hands-on minutes, the box 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 pie. Mozzarella moves by the week, a heavy hand on the cheese adds an ounce a pie, and the slices left at close change what each pie really cost.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack costs each pie from its recipe and from what each batch used.

Recipes by weight. Each pie 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.

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.

Questions people also ask

How much should I charge for a pizza?

Work out the full cost, dough, sauce, cheese, your time, the box and overhead, then divide by 1 minus your margin and fee rate; the example's $7.35 pie prices at $16.00 for a 50% margin.

How do you calculate the cost of a pizza?

Add the batch's ingredients and divide by the pies it makes, then add your time, the box and a share of overhead.

What is a good profit margin on pies?

Set your own target after fees; the example uses 50% on direct sales and accepts less on wholesale.

What is a good food cost for pizza?

In the example, the dough, sauce and cheese of a cheese pie are $3.50 of a $16.00 pie; the cheese is most of it.