Is Selling Dried Fruit Profitable? The Margins, Worked Out

It can be, and the fruit decides it. Fresh fruit is mostly water, so a 2-ounce bag of apple chips takes about 14 ounces of apples; bought as seconds, cheap blemished fruit, that's pennies. Mango costs far more per bag and keeps a thinner margin. Sold direct, apple chips keep about half their price; wholesale, about a quarter. Margin = (price − cost) ÷ price. In the example below, a 2-ounce bag of apple chips costs $2.34 to make and sell direct and goes for $5.00, a 53.2% margin. A month of four ways of selling brings $8,900 of sales and about $3,410 of gross profit.

The short version

• Margin = (price − cost) ÷ price; markup = (price − cost) ÷ cost.
• Count your time as a cost, even if you don't pay yourself yet.
• A 2-ounce bag of apple chips direct: $2.34, $5.00, 53.2%.
• Fresh fruit is mostly water: price from the pounds that go in.
• Seconds make cheap apple chips.
• Mango costs more per bag and keeps less.
• TaroStack costs each bag from what each batch used. More below.

A bag, costed

Central Valley Dried Fruit Co., the made-up dried fruit maker in Fresno, California, I use in these examples, dries apple chips, mango and fruit leather from seconds bought from packing houses:

The year is in dried fruit business plan, and markup worked from the same numbers in markup percentage formula.

Margins by channel

The wholesale bag keeps 27%; the mango keeps 33.1%, with more than $3.70 of fruit in it; the leather keeps 52%.

A month's numbers

A month for Central Valley Dried Fruit Co.:

Wholesale apple chips bring the most sales and direct bags the most gross profit per bag. Mango is on the table because customers ask for it, not because it pays like apples. Gross margin itself is in gross margin formula.

Get the calculator

Download the dried fruit margin calculator. One sheet: one line for each product and channel, with its price, materials, packaging, labor and fee rate; the cost, gross profit, margin, markup and the price your target margin needs 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 holds one fruit price. Seconds that cost twice as much in a short year, mangoes that vary by shipment, and a batch that dried too dark change the month.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack costs each bag from what each batch used, so margins sit on real cost.

True cost from the batch. Each batch takes fruit at the price of the deliveries they came from, so a price rise shows in the next batch's cost.

Labor on the batch. The minutes a batch took are recorded on it, so the hours behind each product are on record.

Margins by product. Margins are reported per product on that actual cost, and a price-creep report per supplier shows whose prices moved.

Recipes, batches, costing 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.

Questions people also ask

Is selling dried fruit profitable?

It can be: in the example, the main product keeps 53.2% after its full cost, and a month of $8,900 in sales leaves about $3,410 of gross profit before fixed costs and the owner's pay.

What is a good profit margin on dried fruit?

In the example, 53.2% on the main product sold direct; wholesale and fundraiser prices keep less, so the mix matters.

How much fresh fruit does it take to make dried fruit?

In the example, about 14 ounces of apples for a 2-ounce bag of chips; fruit is mostly water.

Is selling dried fruit wholesale worth it?

In the example, a wholesale bag keeps 27%, thin, so it works with cheap seconds and big batches.