To price a whole pound cake you add up its full cost first: the butter, sugar, eggs and flour by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the box, board and label, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one cake 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 10-inch pound cake that costs $21.10 to make, a 45% margin after 3% fees means $40.58, rounded up to $41.00. Butter is the biggest ingredient cost, nearly half of it; the old pound-of-each recipe makes butter the dear pound. A grocery pays less a cake and adds its own markup. In the example below, a Georgia home baker prices its pound cakes for the market and a neighborhood grocery.
The short version
- Full cost = butter, sugar, eggs and flour a cake + your time + box, board 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 butter and eggs; they move the most.
- Georgia's cottage food law allows selling to a grocery; check your state's.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each cake from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a cake's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Butter, sugar, eggs and flour | The batch's cost ÷ cakes a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ cakes × your hourly rate |
| Box, board and label | Per cake |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the cakes you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
What Georgia allows, grocery sales included, is in georgia cottage food laws, and cake prices by the serving in how to price cakes.
An example: a whole pound cake
Peach Belt Bakehouse, the made-up home baker in Macon, Georgia, I use in these examples, bakes four 10-inch pound cakes at a time:
| A batch of 4 cakes | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Butter | 4 lb | $18.00 |
| Sugar | 6 lb | $4.80 |
| Eggs | 2.5 dozen | $9.00 |
| Cake flour | 6 lb | $5.40 |
| Milk, vanilla and salt | $4.20 | |
| A batch | $41.40 |
| A cake | Cost |
|---|---|
| Butter, sugar, eggs and flour, $41.40 ÷ 4 | $10.35 |
| Time, 90 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 4 | $7.50 |
| Box, board and label | $1.75 |
| Overhead | $1.50 |
| Full cost | $21.10 |
At a 45% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $21.10 ÷ 0.52 = $40.58, so $41.00. At $41.00 a cake, each leaves $18.67. The church sale price had been $35.00, which leaves $12.85. The neighborhood grocery pays $28.00 a cake and sells it for about $38, which leaves $6.06 a cake, on a standing order of eight a week that needs no market table. Selling through stores in general is in selling to grocery stores requirements.
Get the calculator
Download the pound cake price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the cakes 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 batch. Butter and egg prices move by the month, a lemon glaze or a cream cheese version takes different amounts, and the grocery's weekly order changes how many batches a week you bake.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each cake from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each cake 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 cake costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Cakes on the grocery's rack by date | A note in the car | Lots on each order |
| 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.