Cost per jar: hot sauces, chilli pastes and condiments

The cost per bottle of a sauce is everything you spent on the batch divided by the bottles you actually filled, plus the bottle, cap, label and your time per unit. The costliest mistake is counting bottles from the weight of the raw ingredients: chillies get stemmed, the sauce gets strained, it loses water on the stove, and some always stays in the blender. Weigh the finished sauce, take off what never reaches a bottle, and divide by your real fill weight. That gives you the yield, and the yield gives you the cost.

Weigh what comes out of the pot, not what goes in

Add 2 kg of chillies, 1.5 kg of carrots, onion and garlic, and 1.5 litres of vinegar, and it looks like you have about 5 kg of sauce. You do not. Stems come off, seeds and skins get strained out, and part of the liquid simmers away. What matters is what the sauce weighs when it is done.

The simplest way:

1. Weigh the empty pot and write the number down (the tare).
2. At the end, weigh the pot with the finished sauce.
3. Subtract the tare. That is your finished batch weight.

Do this over several batches and use the average. The number is yours: it depends on your chillies, your stove and how far you reduce. The guide on how to measure recipe yield explains how to repeat the measurement until you trust it, and the yield tool gives you the real cost per usable kilo after trimming and cooking loss.

Fill weight and filling loss

Not all of the finished batch makes it into bottles:

• What sticks to the pot, the blender, the funnel and the ladle.
• The test bottle you open to check flavour and heat.
• Overfill. If you fill each bottle to the neck so it never looks short, that extra goes out in every bottle.

So the number you divide by is not the volume on the label but what you actually put in. Bottles are easier to fill by weight than by eye: fill ten, weigh them, subtract the weight of an empty bottle with its cap, and take the average. That is your fill weight.

Bottle, cap, label and seal

In sauces and condiments, packaging is a big share of the cost. Add up per bottle:

• Glass bottle or jar and cap. If you buy them separately, add both.
• Front label and, if you use one, a back label.
• Shrink band or tamper seal.
• Your share of the case you deliver in, if you sell to shops.

If you buy bottles by the case or the pallet, divide the price by the units and add the shipping. The guide on how to cost packaging and labels shows how, and the one on packaging minimum orders covers what happens to your cash when a supplier makes you buy months of stock at once.

Your time and the energy

Hot sauce is not just blending. You stem chillies in gloves, simmer, blend, strain, sterilise bottles, fill, cap, label and clean down. Count the hours from start to finish and give them a rate. Add the gas or electricity for the batch. Spread over the bottles, that is part of the loaded cost per unit.

Worked example: hot sauce in 150 ml bottles

You make a red chilli and carrot sauce and sell it in 150 ml glass bottles. Here is one batch, priced from your last wholesaler receipt:

Yield. What goes into the pot weighs about 5.1 kg. After simmering, blending and straining, the finished sauce weighs 3.9 kg. About 100 g stays in the pot, blender and funnel, leaving 3.8 kg to fill. You weighed it: a 150 ml bottle filled to the neck takes 160 g of your sauce.

• Bottles: 3,800 ÷ 160 = 23.75, so 23 bottles. The last 120 g is for tasting.

Cost per bottle:

• Ingredients: 16.00 ÷ 23 = $0.70
• Bottle and cap $0.85 + label $0.25 + shrink band $0.05 = $1.15
• Your time: 2.5 hours × $15 = $37.50; 37.50 ÷ 23 = $1.63
• Energy for the batch: $3.00; 3.00 ÷ 23 = $0.13
• Total: 0.70 + 1.15 + 1.63 + 0.13 = $3.61 per bottle

The raw-weight mistake. If you had divided the 5.1 kg of raw ingredients by 150 g, you would have planned on 34 bottles. With 34 bottles the cost looked like 16.00 ÷ 34 + 1.15 + 37.50 ÷ 34 + 3.00 ÷ 34 = $2.81. That is $0.80 a bottle off, and 11 bottles in your plan that never existed. Sell 100 bottles a month and that is $80 a month you thought you were making and were not.

If you change the bottle size

Say you want a 100 ml bottle at a lower price point too. Same 3.8 kg batch, and a 100 ml bottle takes 105 g of your sauce:

• Bottles: 3,800 ÷ 105 = 36.2, so 36 bottles
• Ingredients: 16.00 ÷ 36 = $0.44
• Small bottle and cap $0.70 + label $0.25 + band $0.05 = $1.00
• Time: more bottles to fill adds 15 minutes, 2.75 hours × $15 = $41.25; 41.25 ÷ 36 = $1.15
• Energy: 3.00 ÷ 36 = $0.08
• Total: $2.67 per bottle

Compare per 100 ml: the 150 ml bottle costs you 3.61 ÷ 1.5 = $2.41 per 100 ml, and the 100 ml bottle costs $2.67. The small bottle is cheaper per unit but dearer per ml, because the glass, the cap and your time do not shrink the way the sauce does. Price it with that in mind. The unit price tool lets you put both sizes side by side.

Common mistakes

• Pricing vinegar from a jug you have not bought yet. If you buy vinegar in 5 litre jugs and use 1.5, count the price per litre of that jug and decide what happens to the rest. The guide on adjusting recipes to the pack sizes you buy covers that case.
• Ignoring the bottle that breaks in the steriliser or on delivery. If one in 50 breaks, add it as waste.
• Measuring yield once. Juicier or meatier chillies change the batch. Weigh several and use the average.

If you also make jam, the sum is similar but cook-down loss is bigger; the guide on jams and cook-down loss covers it. To go from cost per bottle to a shelf price, follow the guide on how to price a packaged food product.

Do it with the calculator

In the cost calculator you enter the batch ingredients, the bottles you actually fill and the cost of the bottle, cap and label. It gives you the loaded cost per bottle, so you can set a price on that number.