A macaron business plan sets out what you'll bake and who buys it, what a macaron costs and sells for, the kitchen and freezer it needs, and the first year month by month. Macarons are a craft of failures: cracked tops, hollow shells, no feet, and a batch that came out fine on Tuesday and wrong on Thursday. Every failed shell has already used almond flour and time, so the cost of a good macaron has to carry the ones that didn't make it, and the hours of piping, matching and filling are most of what one costs. In the example below, a baker in Kansas City sells boxes of six, gift boxes of twelve, singles to cafés and event orders, makes a profit from month 5, and ends the year about $7,300 ahead on $44,300 of sales, after paying $20 an hour for the baking. The cafés take more macarons than any other channel and leave the least. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, failure rates, the projection, the startup budget, and a free template.
The short version
- Describe the business in a paragraph: what you bake, where you sell, the kitchen, the goals.
- Cost a good macaron: ingredients spread over the shells that came out, plus the time.
- Failed shells are a cost; at 20% they add a quarter to the ingredients.
- Boxes and event orders pay; café singles barely do.
- Freeze filled macarons to sell a batch over days, not hours.
- Budget for a good mixer, a freezer and boxes before the first market.
- TaroStack costs every bake by the good macarons it made. More below.
Part 1: the business description
Petite Lune Macarons, a made-up macaron bakery in Kansas City, Missouri, I use in these examples, writes:
Petite Lune Macarons bakes French macarons in a shared commercial kitchen, sold in boxes at two farmers markets and online, as singles to cafés, and by the hundred for weddings and events. Every box carries its bake date. In our first year we plan to supply 6 cafés.
Part 2: what a macaron costs
| One good macaron | Cost |
|---|---|
| Almond flour, sugars, egg whites, filling, color | $0.27 |
| With one shell in five failing | $0.33 |
| Piping, resting, baking, matching and filling, 2½ minutes at $20 an hour | $0.83 |
| A good macaron | $1.16 |
Then each product adds its own:
| Per unit | Box of 6 | Gift box of 12 | Café single | Event order of 100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Macarons | $6.96 | $13.92 | $1.16 | $116.00 |
| Box, insert or tray | $1.20 | $2.00 | $0.05 | $10.00 |
| Card fee, 3% | $0.48 | $0.90 | ||
| Delivery share | $0.05 | $15.00 | ||
| Variable cost | $8.64 | $16.82 | $1.26 | $141.00 |
Almond flour is the expensive ingredient, and the time is more than twice the ingredients. How to put labor into a cost is in how to compute labor cost in baking.
Part 3: customers and prices
| Product | Price | Variable cost | Contribution | Margin | A month at full speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Macarons, box of 6, direct | $16.00 | $8.64 | $7.36 | 46.0% | 150 |
| Macarons, gift box of 12 | $30.00 | $16.82 | $13.18 | 43.9% | 60 |
| Macarons to cafés, each | $1.60 | $1.26 | $0.34 | 21.3% | 800 |
| Event order, 100 macarons | $250.00 | $141.00 | $109.00 | 43.6% | 4 |
At full speed the cafés take 800 macarons a month, more than any other channel, and leave $272 for about 33 hours of baking. A café price of $2.00 instead of $1.60 would add $320 a month; event orders, four a month, leave $436. How to set a café price that still pays is in how to price baked goods for wholesale.
Part 4: failure rates
The plan assumes one shell in five fails. At that rate, 27 cents of ingredients becomes 33 cents a good macaron. A baker still learning, losing one in three, pays about 41 cents in ingredients and, because the time is spread over fewer good macarons, about $1.00 in labor: $1.41 a good macaron instead of $1.16, which leaves a café single 9 cents. Keep a note of each batch's good count; the batches that fail together usually share a cause, a humid day, an oven running hot, old egg whites. How a loss rate turns into cost is in scrap rate formula.
Filled macarons freeze well, which lets a baker spread one day's bake across a week of sales and events. Whether macarons can be baked at home for sale depends on your state and the filling: buttercream and ganache are often treated differently from cream cheese or fresh cream fillings, which need refrigeration. This plan uses a shared commercial kitchen. Almonds are a tree nut and eggs a major allergen, so every box says so.
Part 5: the first year, month by month
Fixed costs are $875 a month: shared kitchen time ($500), insurance ($50), market fees ($150), the website and online shop ($40), software and card fees ($35), and marketing ($100). Sales start at 15% of full speed and reach it by month 11, about 2,800 macarons a month:
| Month | Boxes of 6 | Gift boxes | Café singles | Event orders | Sales | Profit | Cash, year to date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 23 | 9 | 120 | 1 | $1,080 | −$437 | −$437 |
| 2 | 30 | 12 | 160 | 1 | $1,346 | −$333 | −$770 |
| 3 | 38 | 15 | 200 | 1 | $1,628 | −$221 | −$991 |
| 4 | 45 | 18 | 240 | 1 | $1,894 | −$116 | −$1,107 |
| 5 | 60 | 24 | 320 | 2 | $2,692 | $210 | −$897 |
| 6 | 75 | 30 | 400 | 2 | $3,240 | $426 | −$470 |
| 7 | 90 | 36 | 480 | 2 | $3,788 | $643 | $173 |
| 8 | 105 | 42 | 560 | 3 | $4,586 | $969 | $1,141 |
| 9 | 120 | 48 | 640 | 3 | $5,134 | $1,185 | $2,327 |
| 10 | 135 | 54 | 720 | 4 | $5,932 | $1,511 | $3,838 |
| 11 | 150 | 60 | 800 | 4 | $6,480 | $1,728 | $5,566 |
| 12 | 150 | 60 | 800 | 4 | $6,480 | $1,728 | $7,294 |
The year's sales are $44,280 and the profit $7,294, on top of $20 an hour for the baking.
Part 6: the startup budget
| Item | Example |
|---|---|
| Heavy-duty stand mixer | $500 |
| Sheet pans, silicone mats, oven thermometer | $200 |
| Piping bags and tips | $80 |
| Scale | $40 |
| Chest freezer | $400 |
| Boxes and inserts, first order | $600 |
| Label design | $250 |
| Permits | $300 |
| Market tent and display | $450 |
| Working cash | $2,000 |
| Total to start | $4,820 |
Get the template
Download the macaron business plan workbook. Four sheets: your products with price, variable cost and monthly volume at full speed; the year, month by month, with sales, profit and cash; your fixed costs; and your startup budget with working cash. It's an ordinary Excel file with no macros, and it works in Google Sheets, LibreOffice and Numbers.
Where this stops working
A dozen flavors, shells baked one day and filled the next, a freezer holding a week of stock by flavor and date, and cafés and events drawing on the same trays. Which flavor is running low, how many good macarons each bake really gave, and what a macaron costs this month all end up as guesses.
How TaroStack does it
TaroStack costs every bake by what it really gave.
Bakes by their good count. Each flavor is a recipe, shells and filling, with a scrap % for failed shells, and units convert: almond flour bought by the 25-pound bag, weighed by the gram. Recording a bake takes the ingredients off stock at what you paid and divides by the macarons that came out good, so a bad day shows in the cost.
The freezer by flavor and date. Each bake goes into a lot with its date, picking takes the oldest first, and lots close to their date show in your alerts. Café and event orders are sales orders that show whether the macarons to fill them are in the freezer while you're still typing.
And recipe truth. Your own bake history shows whether a recipe yields what it claims, and margins are reported by product and by customer, so the café price that needs raising shows up.
| The job | Notebook | In TaroStack |
|---|---|---|
| What a macaron cost this month | Last spring's number | Each bake, by the good count |
| Flavors in the freezer | Count the trays | Lots by flavor and date |
| Does the café price pay? | A feeling | Margins by customer |
| Is the recipe yielding? | A guess | Recipe truth, from your bakes |
Recipes, batches, lots and margins by product and customer 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.