Chocolate batch cost calculator
Works out what a batch of chocolate costs per bar from your own ingredient, labour and packaging figures, and the selling price a chosen margin needs.
The figures below are a worked example. Replace every one with your own: no price here is a guide to what anything costs. Use any currency, as long as it is the same one throughout.
3.06 per unit, from 26 units
- Ingredients weighed
- 2100g
- Finished chocolate
- 1575g, with 15g left over
- Ingredients
- 20.50 (25.8% of the total)
- Labour
- 45.00 (56.5%)
- Packaging
- 9.10 (11.4%)
- Other
- 5.00 (6.3%)
- Total for the batch
- 79.60
- Per kg of chocolate, unpackaged
- 44.76
1.94 left per unit
- Margin, as a share of the price
- 38.8%
- Markup, as a share of the cost
- 63.3%
- Batch takes in
- 130.00
- Batch leaves
- 50.40
For a margin of 60%, one unit has to sell for 7.65.
What this cannot tell you
- It contains no prices. Every figure comes from what you enter, and the example it opens with is an illustration, not a guide to what anything costs.
- It costs one batch. It does not spread equipment, rent, insurance, certification or your own unpaid time across a year unless you enter a share of them yourself.
- It does not handle tax. Enter the selling price you actually receive: without sales tax, and after a retailer or marketplace has taken its share.
- The loss figure is yours to measure. Losses from bean to bar vary widely with the beans, the roast and the equipment, and a guessed figure moves the answer more than any other input.
- It says what a price would return, not whether anyone will pay it. That depends on the market you sell into.
- It is arithmetic, not accounting or business advice.
Margin is not markup
They are two answers to two questions and they are confused constantly. Markup is profit as a share of what the bar cost you. Margin is profit as a share of what the customer paid. A bar that costs 2.00 and sells for 3.00 has a markup of 50% and a margin of 33%.
It matters when working backwards. To keep a margin of 60% the price is the cost divided by 0.4, which is two and a half times the cost. Adding 60% to the cost gives a margin of 37.5%. The calculator uses the first sum and shows both numbers.
Why loss is the number that matters most
A maker starting from beans loses weight at every step: the shell comes off at winnowing, moisture leaves in roasting, and some chocolate always stays on the stones and the bowl. The cost of everything lost is carried by what is left, so a batch that loses a quarter of its weight costs a third more per kilogram than the ingredients suggest. Weigh a real batch before and after; no table can tell you your own loss. For what moves the price of the cocoa itself, see cocoa price history and why fine chocolate costs what it does.