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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 28perdozenandcosts28 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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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. Use it to make informed pricing decisions.
  • Low margin (under 40%) — Your ingredient costs are eating into your profits. Consider raising your price or finding a more affordable supplier.
  • Healthy margin (50-70%) — A solid range for most baked goods. You are covering ingredients with room for your time and overhead.
  • High margin (above 70%) — Great profitability. These products are good candidates for promotions or volume discounts.
Keep in mind that ingredient cost is only part of the picture. Your time, packaging, delivery costs, and overhead matter too. But knowing your ingredient margin is the essential starting point.
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.
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