To sell cookies wholesale, first make sure your kitchen is allowed to: some states' cottage food rules allow sales to stores and cafés, others allow only direct sales, and then a licensed or shared commercial kitchen is the way in. Then price so a café can sell your $2.50 cookie for $4, sell on standing weekly orders rather than one-off boxes, wrap and label every cookie, and plan the delivery route as part of the cost. In the example below, a cookie maker near Salt Lake City supplies four cafés and a gift shop, $11,630 in the first year, which leaves about $4,400 after the cookies' cost. Below is the rules, the prices, standing orders, labels and delivery, a café's first week, the first year, and a free calculator.
The short version
- Check whether your state's cottage food rules allow sales to stores; if not, you need a licensed kitchen.
- Wholesale a café can mark up by about 60%: a $4 cookie on the counter is $2.50 to them.
- Your cost needs to leave you 40% or more at the wholesale price; check every cookie.
- Sell standing weekly orders, delivered on set days, invoiced monthly.
- Wrap and label every cookie the way your state's rules ask, even in a café's case.
- Count the delivery: a route that takes two hours twice a week is part of the cost.
- TaroStack takes the standing orders, picks them earliest batches first, and shows each account's margin. More below.
Can your kitchen sell wholesale?
In Utah, a registered cottage food operation with a food handler's permit can bake at home (Utah Code 4-5-501), and its products may be sold within Utah directly to consumers or to stores for resale, labeled with the name, ingredients, net quantity, allergens, the business's name and contact, and "Home Produced" (UDAF). Not every state allows that. Some cottage food laws allow only sales from the producer to the person who'll eat the food; some cap yearly sales; some don't allow shipping or selling across state lines. If yours doesn't allow store sales, renting time in a licensed commercial kitchen is the usual route to cafés. This is general information, not legal advice.
Prices that work for a café
Granite Peak Cookie Co., a made-up cookie maker in Sandy, Utah, I use in these examples, sells to cafés and a gift shop at:
| Cookie | Cost | Wholesale | Café's price | Case | Case price | Your margin | Café's margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chocolate chip cookie, large, wrapped | $1.44 | $2.50 | $4.00 | 12 | $30.00 | 42.4% | 37.5% |
| Decorated sugar cookie | $2.80 | $4.00 | $7.00 | 12 | $48.00 | 30.0% | 42.9% |
| Half-dozen gift box | $8.54 | $14.00 | $22.00 | 4 | $56.00 | 39.0% | 36.4% |
A café keeps less than a gift shop does, because a cookie sells beside a coffee it makes money on. The chocolate chip cookie leaves Granite Peak $1.06; the decorated cookie, with five minutes of piping in it, leaves $1.20 but only 30%, so it's sold wholesale for events and holidays, not every week. How the cost of a cookie is built from butter, flour, chocolate and minutes is in how to price baked goods for wholesale.
Standing orders, not one-off boxes
Cafés want the same cookies on the same days without having to ask. A standing order, two dozen chocolate chip every Tuesday and Friday, lets you bake to a number, buy butter on a schedule and plan a delivery route. Agree on what happens to unsold cookies before the first delivery: Granite Peak doesn't take returns, and suggests a café sell day-olds at a discount. Invoice monthly, with payment due in 15 days; how to set terms is in net 30 terms.
Labels and delivery
Every cookie goes in its own sealed bag with the label Utah asks for, even the ones a café puts in a glass case. The label also carries the bake date, so the café rotates oldest first, and a question about a cookie leads back to the batch. Delivery is a cost: a route that takes two hours on Tuesday and Friday is four hours a week of driving, which Granite Peak covers by keeping deliveries inside a 10-mile loop and asking for a $30 minimum, one dozen.
A café's first week
| Cookie | Dozen | Cookies | Each | Total | Left after cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chocolate chip cookie, large, wrapped | 3 | 36 | $2.50 | $90.00 | $38.16 |
| Decorated sugar cookie | 1 | 12 | $4.00 | $48.00 | $14.40 |
| The first week | 4 | 48 | $138.00 | $52.56 |
The decorated dozen is a trial for a holiday display. After the first week, the café settles into three dozen chocolate chip a week, $90.
The first year
| Account | First order | Orders a year | Average order | The year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coffee shop, Sandy | $60 | 50 | $60 | $3,060 |
| Coffee shop, Draper | $30 | 50 | $30 | $1,530 |
| Café, Salt Lake City | $90 | 50 | $90 | $4,590 |
| Deli, Murray | $30 | 48 | $30 | $1,470 |
| Gift shop, Park City, boxes | $140 | 6 | $140 | $980 |
| Five accounts | $350 | $11,630 |
Seven dozen cookies a week to four cafés and a deli, plus gift boxes for a Park City shop in its busy seasons, come to $11,630, which leaves about $4,400 at the first week's 38% margin. That's less than the Saturday market leaves for the same number of cookies, and it comes every week, rain or shine, without a stall. How much of each sale is left to pay the kitchen's fixed costs is in contribution margin example.
Finding cafés
Cafés that don't bake their own: independent coffee shops, delis, bookstore cafés and gift shops. Go in the quiet hour after lunch, with a box of wrapped cookies to leave, the price list and your label, and ask for the owner or manager. Coffee shops often take one flavor to start; once it sells, they'll add a second.
Get the calculator
Download the cookie wholesale calculator. Three sheets: prices, where each cookie's cost, wholesale price, the café's price and case give the case price and both margins; opening order, where an account's dozens give the cookies, total and what it leaves, checked against your minimum; and shops, one line for each account with its first order, orders a year and average order, where the year and what it leaves fill in. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
Five standing orders on two delivery days, a Saturday market and preordered dozens, all baked from the same butter, flour and chocolate, with cafés that change their order by a dozen on a Monday text. A sheet can't say how many to bake Thursday night, whether there's chocolate for it, or which café got Thursday's batch if a customer asks.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack takes the standing orders, picks them earliest batches first, and shows each account's margin.
Orders and picking. Each account's delivery is a sales order, with the date it's wanted, and the day's orders make one picking list with the earliest batches first, and a delivery note for each stop.
Baking to the orders. "What could I make right now" says how many batches the butter, flour and chocolate on the shelf allow, and each batch takes them off stock and gets a lot of its own, recorded on each account's order as it ships.
Margins by account. Margins are reported by product and by customer, so the café that takes three dozen chocolate chip and the gift shop that takes boxes each show what they leave.
| The job | Notebook | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| Thursday's baking | Add up the orders | Sales orders by date |
| Packing the route | Written lists | One picking list, delivery notes |
| Which café got batch 31 | Memory | Lots recorded as it ships |
| Does the deli pay? | A guess | Margins by customer |
Sales orders, batches, lots and margin reports 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.