To price a 4-ounce jar of live sourdough starter you add up its full cost first: the flour that feeds the mother starter by the batch, your time at an hourly rate, the jar, lid and care card, and a share of overhead like rent and power. That's what one jar 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 4-ounce jar of live starter that costs $2.14 to make, a 70% margin after 3% fees means $7.92, rounded up to $8.00. Flour costs almost nothing; the time it takes to feed the mother starter every day, and to jar and explain it, is the cost. Most starter sells direct, to the bakery's own customers, with a care card. In the example below, a North Dakota micro bakery prices live starter for its market customers.
The short version
- Full cost = flour a jar + your time + jar, lid and care card + 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 daily feeding of the mother starter, spread over the jars you sell.
- Include a care card: it saves a dozen questions.
- Check what wholesale leaves after full cost before saying yes.
- TaroStack costs each jar from its recipe and what each batch used. More below.
What goes into a jar's cost
| Part | How to count it |
|---|---|
| Flour | The batch's cost ÷ jars a batch |
| Your time | Hands-on minutes for the batch ÷ jars × your hourly rate |
| Jar, lid and care card | Per jar |
| Overhead | Rent, power, tools, spread over the jars you make |
| Fees | Card and market fees as a share of the price |
The bakery's year is in sourdough business plan, and its loaves in how to price sourdough bread.
An example: a jar of live starter
Prairie Hearth Bread, the made-up micro bakery in Fargo, North Dakota, I use in these examples, sells about 30 jars of its starter a week at the market:
| A week's flour for 30 jars | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Bread flour for the mother starter and jars | 6 lb | $3.00 |
| Whole wheat flour | 1 lb | $0.80 |
| A batch | $3.80 |
| A jar | Cost |
|---|---|
| Flour, $3.80 ÷ 30 | $0.13 |
| Time, 100 minutes for the batch at $20 an hour ÷ 30 | $1.11 |
| Jar, lid and care card | $0.70 |
| Overhead | $0.20 |
| Full cost | $2.14 |
At a 70% margin after 3% card fees, the price is $2.14 ÷ 0.27 = $7.92, so $8.00. At $8.00 a jar, each leaves $5.62. The market price had been $12.00, which leaves $9.50, and stays there, because customers who buy starter come back every week for flour, loaves and advice. Selling it from a home kitchen falls under the same rules as the bread, in north dakota cottage food laws.
Get the calculator
Download the sourdough starter price calculator. One sheet: type the batch's flour, amounts and costs, the jars it makes, the hands-on minutes, the jar 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 jar. A week when nobody buys starter still needs the mother fed, and dried packets mailed across the state cost something else entirely.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs each jar from its recipe and from what each batch used.
Recipes by weight. Each jar 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 jar costs this week | Last season's sheet | True cost from the batch |
| Starter discarded at feeding | Not counted | Waste by 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.