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Overview

Knead calculates the cost of every product you sell based on the ingredients in its recipe. When you keep your ingredient prices up to date in The Pantry, your product costs and profit margins update automatically.

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How Recipe Costing Works

The math flows from ingredients up to products.
  1. Ingredient cost — Each ingredient in The Pantry has a unit cost (e.g., flour costs $0.45 per cup).
  2. Recipe cost — Knead adds up the cost of every ingredient in the recipe based on the quantity used. If a cookie recipe uses 3 cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar, and 2 eggs, the recipe cost is the sum of each ingredient’s quantity multiplied by its unit cost.
  3. Per-unit cost — The recipe cost divided by the recipe yield. If the recipe makes 4 dozen cookies, the per-unit cost is the recipe cost divided by 4.
  4. Margin — The difference between your sell price and your per-unit cost, shown as a percentage. A product that sells for $28 per dozen and costs $9 to make has a margin of about 68%.
Good to know: Knead stores all costs in cents to avoid rounding errors. You see dollar amounts on screen, but the math behind the scenes is precise to the penny.

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Knead Converts Units for You

Recipes and shopping receipts rarely use the same units. Your recipe might call for “2 cups flour” while you buy flour by the 5 lb bag. Knead handles that mismatch automatically — it converts the recipe quantity into the unit you price the ingredient in before it calculates cost. You do not have to do any conversion by hand. Knead can even bridge volume and weight. If your recipe measures an ingredient by volume (cups) but you price it by weight (pounds), Knead uses that ingredient’s known weight — its density — to convert cups into grams, then into your priced unit. That is where reference ingredients come in: because Knead’s built-in reference ingredients carry King Arthur Baking’s tested weight-per-cup data, Knead knows how much a cup of flour or sugar actually weighs.
Pro tip: Match your recipe ingredients to reference ingredients whenever you can. When the density is known, Knead can cost a volume-measured ingredient against a weight-based price. When it is not known, that line can fall back to $0 — which quietly understates your true cost.

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Setting Ingredient Costs in The Pantry

  1. Open The Pantry from the main navigation.
  2. Tap the Ingredients tab.
  3. Find the ingredient you want to update, or tap Add Ingredient to create a new one.
  4. Enter the unit cost — what you pay per unit of this ingredient (e.g., $4.99 per 5 lb bag, broken down to a per-cup cost).
Knead comes with six pre-seeded ingredients when you sign up: flour, sugar, salt, butter, eggs, and milk. You can edit their costs and add as many new ingredients as you need.
Pro tip: When you buy ingredients, update the unit cost in The Pantry right away. This keeps your margins accurate as prices fluctuate.

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Adding Ingredients to a Recipe

Recipes are created inline when you build a product. You do not need to create recipes separately.
  1. Open a product from your catalog.
  2. Tap the Recipe button.
  3. Start typing an ingredient name. Knead shows matching ingredients from your Pantry.
  4. Select the ingredient and enter the quantity used in the recipe.
  5. Repeat for each ingredient.
If an ingredient is not in your Pantry yet, Knead creates it on the fly. Type the name, set the unit and cost, and it saves to your Pantry for future use.

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Viewing Cost and Margin on a Product

Once a recipe is attached and ingredient costs are set, the product detail page shows:
  • Recipe cost — The total cost of all ingredients for one recipe batch.
  • Per-unit cost — The cost per sell unit (e.g., cost per dozen).
  • Sell price — What you charge the customer.
  • Margin — Your profit margin as a percentage.
This gives you a clear picture of how much you earn on every sale.

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Updating Costs When Ingredient Prices Change

Ingredient prices change. When butter goes up by a dollar, your margins shift across every product that uses butter. Knead makes this easy to handle.
  1. Open The Pantry and go to the Ingredients tab.
  2. Tap the ingredient with the new price.
  3. Update the unit cost.
  4. Save the change.
Knead recalculates the recipe cost, per-unit cost, and margin for every product that uses that ingredient. You can then review your product prices and decide if an adjustment is needed.
Pro tip: Check your margins monthly. Even small ingredient price increases can erode profits over time, especially on high-volume items like cookies and cupcakes.

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Using Margins to Set Better Prices

Your margin percentage tells you how much of each sale is profit after ingredient costs. Knead flags each product’s margin so you know where you stand:
  • Healthy (40% and up) — A solid margin. You are covering ingredients with room for your time and overhead.
  • Warning (~20% to 40%) — Getting tight. Consider raising your price or finding a more affordable supplier.
  • Critical (under 20%) — Ingredient costs are eating your profit. This product needs a price change or a cost cut.
Keep in mind that ingredient cost is only part of the picture. Your time, packaging, delivery costs, and overhead matter too. To fold all of those in, use the Help me price this calculator — it suggests a price from your full cost stack, not just ingredients.
Good to know: Margins shown in Knead reflect ingredient costs only. They do not include labor, packaging, or delivery. Use them as a baseline, not the full picture.
Still need help? Contact us