Pasta Business Plan, With a 12-Month Projection

A pasta business plan sets out what you'll make and who buys it, what each product costs and sells for, the kitchen and equipment it needs, and the first year month by month. Flour and eggs are cheap; what a small pasta maker really buys is kitchen time. In a shared kitchen rented by the hour, every minute of rolling, cutting, filling and packing costs twice, once for you and once for the room, so the plan that works is the one that earns the most per kitchen hour. In the example below, a pasta maker in Kansas sells fresh fettuccine at markets, dried rigatoni to shops, frozen ravioli and fresh pasta to restaurants, makes a profit from month 3, and ends the year about $13,000 ahead on $53,400 of sales, after paying $20 an hour for the work and $25 an hour for the kitchen. Below is a description example, each part of the plan, earnings per kitchen hour, the rules, the projection, the startup budget, and a free template.

The short version

• Describe the business in a paragraph: what you make, where you sell, the kitchen, the goals.
• Cost each product with kitchen time and your time in it; flour and eggs are the small part.
• Compare products by what they earn per kitchen hour, not by margin alone.
• Dried pasta from an extruder earns the most per hour; hand-filled ravioli and restaurant pasta the least.
• Fresh egg pasta and filled pasta need to be kept cold; dried pasta doesn't.
• Budget for the extruder: it's the biggest single cost, and it's what makes dried pasta pay.
• TaroStack keeps every batch with its lot and date, fresh, frozen and dried. More below.

Part 1: the business description

Prairie Mill Pasta, a made-up pasta maker in Lawrence, Kansas, I use in these examples, writes:

Prairie Mill Pasta makes fresh egg pasta, bronze-cut dried pasta and filled ravioli in a shared commercial kitchen, sold at two farmers markets, to local grocery shops, and fresh to restaurants. Every package carries a lot code and a date. In our first year we plan to supply 10 shops and 4 restaurants.

Part 2: what each product costs

The shared kitchen charges $25 an hour, and the maker's own time is $20, so an hour of production costs $45 before any flour goes in.

The time per unit is what each takes from mixing to packed: 3¾ minutes for a pound of fresh pasta or a 12-ounce nest pack, 2.4 minutes for a pound of extruded dried pasta, and 6 minutes for a box of hand-filled ravioli. The arithmetic of renting a kitchen by the hour is in commissary kitchen cost.

Part 3: customers, prices and what each earns per kitchen hour

"Earned per kitchen hour" is what's left after the kitchen, your wage and the product's other costs, for each hour in the kitchen. Dried pasta earns the most, even at a wholesale price, because the extruder does the work. Restaurant pasta earns the least: it's the same work as market pasta at a lower price. It's still worth having for its steady weekly orders, but it's the first thing to reprice. How to set a wholesale price that holds up is in how to price baked goods for wholesale, and the same method works for pasta.

Part 4: the rules

Fresh egg pasta and cheese-filled ravioli need to be kept cold, refrigerated or frozen, all the way to the customer, which is why they're made in a licensed kitchen and why cold storage is in the fixed costs. Dried pasta is shelf stable. What your state and city ask of each, and whether dried pasta can be made at home, is worth checking with your state's food safety office before the first batch; how cottage food rules work is in how to start a cottage food business. Ravioli made with cheese and eggs also has allergens to declare on the label: wheat, eggs and milk.

Part 5: the first year, month by month

Fixed costs are $680 a month: the shared kitchen membership ($100), cold storage ($150), market fees ($200), insurance ($70), the vehicle ($100), and the website and software ($60). The kitchen's hourly rent is in each product's cost. Sales start at 15% of full speed and reach it by month 11, when production takes about 62 kitchen hours a month:

The year's sales are $53,393 and the profit $13,040, on top of $20 an hour for the work and the kitchen's rent.

Part 6: the startup budget

The extruder is the biggest line, and it's the reason dried pasta earns the most per hour. Without one, a plan built on fresh pasta and ravioli alone earns less for every hour in the kitchen.

Get the template

Download the pasta 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

Fresh pasta lasts days, ravioli months in the freezer, dried pasta much longer, and all three come out of the same kitchen sessions. A restaurant calls about a batch that tasted off, a shop wants to know which lot of semolina is in its rigatoni, and the freezer holds ravioli from three batches with no clear way to tell which goes first.

How TaroStack does it

TaroStack keeps every batch with its lot and its date.

Batches with lots and dates. Each pasta is a recipe, and units convert: semolina bought by the 50-pound bag, used by the gram. Recording a batch takes flour, eggs and filling off stock from the lots used, at what you paid, and gives the pasta its own lot and best-by date, so fresh pasta, frozen ravioli and dried pasta each carry the dates they need.

Oldest out first. Lots close to their date show in your alerts, and picking takes the oldest first, so the freezer's oldest ravioli go before the newest. One report walks any lot to every customer who got it, if a batch ever has to come back.

And orders by customer. Shop and restaurant orders are sales orders that show whether the stock to fill them is on hand while you're still typing, and margins are reported by product and by customer, so the restaurant price that needs raising shows up.

Recipes, batches, lots, recalls 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.

Questions people also ask

Is a pasta business profitable?

It can be. In the example, a maker selling fresh, dried and filled pasta ends the first year about $13,000 ahead on $53,400 of sales, with $20 an hour paid for the work and the kitchen rented at $25 an hour.

How much does it cost to start a pasta business?

In the example, about $11,950: $8,950 for an extruder, a sheeter, ravioli plates, drying racks, a freezer, tools, packaging, label design, a market setup and permits, and $3,000 of working cash.

Which pasta is most profitable to sell?

In the example, extruded dried pasta, at $63.75 earned per kitchen hour even sold wholesale, against $52.80 for fresh pasta at markets, $48.60 for hand-filled ravioli and $30.24 for fresh pasta to restaurants.

Can I sell fresh pasta from home?

Fresh egg pasta needs refrigeration, so it's usually made in a licensed kitchen. Check with your state's food safety office; dried pasta is shelf stable and some states treat it differently.