Working out what to charge

The lines, in the order they get forgotten

Pricing goes wrong in a predictable order. People count the fruit, then the jar, then stop. The lines below are arranged in the sequence they tend to be left out, and the ones at the bottom are the ones that turn an apparently healthy margin into a season of unpaid work. Write them all down even where the number is small, because the point is the total rather than any one line.

• Discarded fruit. You paid for the whole flat. The cost per usable pound is higher than the price per pound you paid.
• Energy. A long cook plus a canner at a rolling boil, per batch, all season.
• Flat lids. Single use, every batch.
• The case, not the jar. You own the whole case.
• Labels. A print run, amortized over however many you actually use before the design changes.
• Your time, including prep, the overnight you cannot use the kitchen, washing, labeling and the log.

Then compare it to the shelf

Cost tells you the floor and the shelf tells you the ceiling, and your price has to live between them. Walk a market or a farm shop and write down what jam actually sells for in your area, in your jar size. A number worked out from cost alone is a number that assumes somebody will pay it.

Retail is what a market will pay. Wholesale is roughly half of that and the fixed costs do not halve. If the wholesale number does not work, the answer is a different size or a different fruit, because the one lever most producers reach for is closed: the fruit floor is set at 45 parts by regulation.

Where the margin actually is

Two things move the margin more than anything you can negotiate on inputs, and neither is the fruit price. Knowing which two tells you where to spend effort and what to stop optimizing.

Bulk is usually the most profitable per ounce because the packaging cost collapses and nobody is paying for presentation. It is also the least visible, which is why it gets ignored.

References