I am doing some math to recheck my pricing, and I am finding an alarming potential glitch. It may be that a 4oz plastic take-out cup of sauce costs me 68 cents to produce. I think I have a math error somewhere, but I figured I’d ask others what their COGS. I use Stanislaus fresh packed products . . . please include your tomato source if you reply.
It really does make a difference between economy (remanufatured from industrial paste) and premium (fresh packed) labels. Both taste and cost.
ALSO, for those willing to share . . . .what do you charge for a side cup of sauce in a 4oz cup?
That figures out to $21.76 a gallon or roughly $18.02 for a #10 can of your sauce.
Without seeing your sauce formulation and knowing what you are being charged for your ingredients, I’d have to say “Houston, I think we have a problem in our math”.
Tom Lehmann/The Dough Doctor
Tom, you asked the exact right question to find my error. My spreadsheet formula was pointing at the case price instead of the can price! I bumped it somewhere when I was updating a formula.
NOW I am down to 16 cents for a 4 ounce lidded cup. I was thinking about 6 years of insanity and starting to tear up at lost money and increased stupidity on my part over and above the already known quantity.
As you see with your recalculated formula, it really doesn’t make much difference in cost if using an economy or a premium label. An economy sauce MAY cost 50% of a premium one but when you break it down to the portion size we are talking a few pennies per portion. How much of that 16 cent serving is sauce and how much is cup and lid? Makes me wonder why more companies don’t opt for the fresh packed tomatoes.
For me, the cup is 3.5 cents . . . so I am talking 12.5 cents to serve fresh-packed tomato base and high end spices. I spend something like $1.50 in 3.5 ounces spice for a 4.5 gallon batch of sauce. It makes ZERO sense to use cheaper warehouse label spices in a sauce when it costs maybe 25 to 50 cents more PER 4 GALLONS (especially when you figure I am using 25% less by wieght and getting better flavors)!
Now that I have my spreadsheet fixed again . . . . saving $6 a case for a ‘store label’ means only about 1.82 cents on my 16" pizza. Not worth the savings as I would actually use MORE of the cheaper brand to get enough tomatoish flavor, and spicing to get some sort of balanced profile. Saving $6 per case on the same product from a different vendor . . . worth my trouble.