When it pays for itself
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Two different break-evens
There are two and people conflate them, which is how a business that is covering its costs still feels like it is losing money. One is about a batch and one is about a season, and only the second tells you whether to carry on.
| What it asks | Usually answered | |
|---|---|---|
| Equipment | How many jars until the canner and thermometer are paid for | In the first batch or two |
| A season | Does the fruit, glass and time come back | Only if the fruit was cheap |
Working the season
Run the arithmetic across the whole year rather than per batch, because the money leaves in one month and comes back over eleven. A per-batch figure looks healthy for a business that has run out of cash in October.
- Total what goes out: fruit as bought, sugar, pectin, jars by the case, lids, labels, energy.
- Add your time at a rate you would accept from somebody else.
- Divide by the jars you actually got, which is the yield number rather than the hoped-for one.
- Compare to the price the channel will carry, retail and wholesale separately.
The thing that decides it
One variable dominates the whole calculation and it is set before you cook anything. Everything else is rounding by comparison, which is worth knowing before spending an evening optimizing a line that cannot move the answer. Find the dominant variable first, then decide whether the rest is worth your time.
Fruit cost per usable pound. At 45 parts fruit by regulation you cannot engineer around it, so a producer buying firsts at retail is usually underwater and one taking seconds off a grower is usually not. That is the whole economics of this craft in one line.
What the arithmetic will not tell you
Two things sit outside the calculation and both can decide it. Worth holding in mind rather than trusting a spreadsheet that cannot see them.
Whether the season was worth doing. A product that clears a glut of your own fruit has value that does not appear in a per-jar cost, and so does a market stall that sells something else of yours.