To price a 16-ounce smoothie you add up its full cost first: the frozen fruit, yogurt and juice by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the cup, lid and straw, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one smoothie 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 smoothie that costs $4.45 to make, a 40% margin after 3% fees means $7.81, rounded up to $8.00. Staff time at the cart costs more than the fruit, because a smoothie is made one at a time; the cart, commissary and permits are the overhead. An event order is priced lower a cup, blended in a run. In the example below, a Tampa smoothie cart prices its cups for markets and an event.
The short version
- Full cost = fruit, yogurt and juice a smoothie + your time + cup, lid and straw + overhead.
- Price = full cost ÷ (1 − margin − fee rate).
- Count your time at a real hourly rate, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
- Count the staff time per cup, waiting included.
- Price add-ons, like a protein scoop, on their own cost.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each smoothie from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a smoothie's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Fruit, yogurt and juice | The batch's cost ÷ smoothies a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ smoothies × your hourly rate |
| Cup, lid and straw | Per smoothie |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the smoothies you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
The business's year is in smoothie business plan, and cups and lids in how to package smoothies for sale.
An example: a smoothie
Key Lime Blends, the made-up smoothie business in Tampa, Florida, I use in these examples, sells about 120 16-ounce smoothies on a market day:
| A day of 120 smoothies | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Frozen fruit | $108.00 | |
| Yogurt, juice and honey | $54.00 | |
| A batch | $162.00 |
| A smoothie | Cost |
|---|---|
| Fruit, yogurt and juice, $162.00 ÷ 120 | $1.35 |
| Time, 720 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 120 | $2.00 |
| Cup, lid and straw | $0.30 |
| Overhead | $0.80 |
| Full cost | $4.45 |
At a 40% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $4.45 ÷ 0.57 = $7.81, so $8.00. At $8.00 a cup, each leaves $3.31. The cart had said $7.00, which leaves $2.34. An event order of 100 at $6.50 leaves $1.85 a cup, blended in a two-hour run. What a smoothie maker can sell from a home kitchen is in can you sell smoothies from home.
Get the calculator
Download the smoothie price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the smoothies it makes, the hands-on minutes, the cup 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 cup. Frozen berries cost more in winter, a slow afternoon leaves staff waiting, and a bowl with granola and fruit has its own cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each smoothie from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each smoothie 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 smoothie costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Fruit left in the freezer | A guess | Stock in its own units |
| 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.