To price a quart of soup you add up its full cost first: the vegetables, stock and cream 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 quart 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 quart of soup that costs $5.75 to make, a 55% margin after 3% fees means $13.69, rounded up to $14.00. Time costs almost as much as the ingredients: chopping, cooking, cooling fast and filling 40 quarts takes four hours. A co-op pays less and marks it up on its shelf. In the example below, a Vermont soup maker prices its quarts for the market and a co-op.
The short version
- Full cost = vegetables, stock and cream a quart + 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.
- Count the cooling time: soup has to drop from 135°F to 70°F within 2 hours and to 41°F within 6.
- Price the pint from its own cost; the container doesn't halve.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each quart of soup from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a quart's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Vegetables, stock and cream | The batch's cost ÷ quarts a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ quarts × your hourly rate |
| Container and label | Per quart |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the quarts you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
The soup maker's year is in soup business plan, and containers and labels in how to package soup for sale.
An example: a quart of soup
Mill Race Soup Co., the made-up soup maker in Burlington, Vermont, I use in these examples, cooks ten gallons of soup at a time in a shared kitchen and fills 40 quarts:
| Ten gallons, 40 quarts | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Vegetables, beans and aromatics | $52.00 | |
| Stock, cream and butter | $30.00 | |
| Herbs, spices and salt | $14.00 | |
| A batch | $96.00 |
| A quart | Cost |
|---|---|
| Vegetables, stock and cream, $96.00 ÷ 40 | $2.40 |
| Time, 240 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 40 | $2.00 |
| Container and label | $0.55 |
| Overhead | $0.80 |
| Full cost | $5.75 |
At a 55% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $5.75 ÷ 0.42 = $13.69, so $14.00. At $14.00 a quart, each leaves $7.83. The market had said $12.00 in its first season, which leaves $5.89. The co-op's $8.50 leaves $2.49 a quart, and takes 24 quarts every week. Keeping the cooling record is in temperature log template.
Get the calculator
Download the soup price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's ingredients, amounts and costs, the quarts 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 one soup. Squash costs half as much in October as in May, a cream soup costs more than a bean soup, and the quarts that don't sell by their date change what each one sold really cost.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each quart of soup from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each quart of soup 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 quart of soup costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Quarts by batch date | Marker on the lid | 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.