Otherfoods Kitchen Food Production Guide: Food Cost (COGS)

What You’ll Learn

• What COGS means

• Calculating recipe cost

• Pricing products

• Improving margins


Many food businesses know what ingredients cost but don’t know what each finished product actually costs to produce.

Good COGS includes:

Ingredients

Packaging

Labels

Direct labor

Production losses

Recipe yield

Understanding these costs helps answer important questions:

Can I afford wholesale pricing?

Which products are most profitable?

Should I increase prices?

How much waste am I creating?

Knowing your numbers is often the difference between growing a profitable business and simply staying busy.


Common Mistakes

Ignoring packaging costs

Ignoring production waste

Guessing recipe yields

Not updating ingredient prices


Software Can Help

Recipe costing software automatically recalculates product costs whenever ingredient prices change.

About OtherFoods Kitchen

OtherFoods Kitchen is a Department of Agriculture certified shared commercial kitchen dedicated to helping food entrepreneurs launch, produce, and grow successful food businesses. In addition to commercial kitchen access, we provide educational resources and software tools that simplify production, inventory management, lot tracing, recipe costing, and food business operations.


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