What empanadas cost to make, per piece and per dozen

A baked beef empanada can cost you about $1.40 to make, and a boxed dozen about $17.70, if you make a butter dough, fill each one with 50 g of seasoned beef mince bought at $11.00 a kilo, add egg and olive, pay $15 an hour for the work, and 28 of every 30 you shape come out whole. That is an example with stated assumptions, not a market price. Your grams, your oven and your breakage will change it. The method below gets you your own number, and it works the same for pasties, hand pies and other savoury pastries.

What goes into the cost of an empanada

An empanada is two recipes in one: the dough and the filling. Cost each one on its own, then bring them together per piece, as in the general method for working out what any dish costs to make.

• Dough: the batch cost divided by the discs you actually cut.
• Filling: the batch cost divided by its cooked weight, times the grams in each empanada.
• Per-piece extras: hard-boiled egg, olive, cheese, egg wash.
• Cooking: oven fuel, or oil and gas if you fry.
• Labour: rolling, cutting, filling, crimping.
• Breakage: pieces that split, burn or look wrong and do not get sold.
• Packaging: bag, paper or box.

Step 1: dough per disc

Cost the whole batch and divide by the discs you cut, not the number the recipe claims. Offcuts can be re-rolled, but the second roll is often tougher and some of it ends up in the bin. Count what you really use.

Step 2: filling by cooked weight

This is the step most people get wrong. You buy 1 kg of mince and 1 kg of onions, but the filling loses water in the pan. Cost it as if you had 2 kg of filling and every empanada looks cheaper than it is.

Do this instead:

1. Add up the cost of everything that went into the pan.
2. Weigh the filling once it has cooled and is ready to use.
3. Divide the cost by the grams: that is your cost per gram of filling.
4. Multiply by the grams in each empanada.

The cooked weight is yours. It depends on your heat, your pan and how far you reduce. Measure it once, and again if you change your meat supplier.

Step 3: oven or oil

If you bake, measure what the oven uses for one batch and divide it by the empanadas on those trays. A half-full oven puts more fuel on each piece.

If you fry, oil costs you twice. First, what the empanadas soak up: check the oil level before and after a batch. Second, the oil you throw out when it is spent, shared across every batch it fried. If 30 empanadas take the oil down 300 ml and oil costs $2.50 a litre, that is $0.75 ÷ 30 = $0.025 per empanada just for absorption. The guide to what frying oil really costs covers oil life.

Worked example: baked beef empanadas

Every number here is an assumption. Use your own.

Dough. 1 kg of flour ($1.10), 250 g of butter ($2.50), 2 eggs ($0.60), salt and water ($0.02). Total: $4.22. You cut 30 discs.

• Dough per disc: 4.22 ÷ 30 = $0.14

Filling. 1 kg of beef mince ($11.00), 1 kg of onions ($1.50), spices ($1.00), oil ($0.30). Total: $13.80. Once cooled, the filling weighs 1,500 g.

• Cost per gram: 13.80 ÷ 1,500 = $0.0092
• Filling per empanada: 50 g × 0.0092 = $0.46

Per empanada shaped:

Breakage. Of every 30 you shape, 2 split or burn. The 28 you sell carry the cost of all 30: 1.31 × 30 ÷ 28 = $1.40 per sellable empanada.

Packaging.

• Single, in a $0.08 bag: 1.40 + 0.08 = $1.48
• A dozen in a $0.90 box: 1.40 × 12 + 0.90 = 16.80 + 0.90 = $17.70

Labour and filling are most of the cost here. Ten more grams of filling per piece is about $0.09 more per empanada and $1.10 more per dozen.

Per piece and per dozen

A dozen does not cost twelve times a single: the packaging changes. One box for twelve is often cheaper than twelve bags, or dearer if it is a printed gift box. Cost both formats separately. The logic is the same as in what a dozen cookies costs to make: cost per sellable piece times twelve, plus the dozen's packaging.

For big orders, the recipe scaler scales your recipe to the number of portions in the order. Always make a few extra for breakage, and keep that extra inside the cost.

Other fillings and pastries

Each filling is its own recipe with its own cost per gram. Chicken uses shredded meat, and the weight left after poaching and shredding is what counts. Cheese has no cooking loss in the pan but some leaks out in the oven. A pasty filling of beef, potato and swede is costed the same way: everything into the pot, weigh it ready, divide.

The method does not change: batch cost, ready weight, cost per gram, grams per piece.

From cost to price

The cost per sellable empanada is your floor. The plate price tool works out a price from that cost and the food cost percentage you want. With the example, a 60% margin on the price before any sales tax gives 1.40 ÷ (1 − 0.60) = $3.50 per empanada. Check your local tax rules for what goes on top.

Do it with the calculator

In the food cost calculator, enter the dough recipe with the discs it gives, the filling with its cooked weight, the extras and how many break per batch. It returns the cost per piece, per dozen and the price for your margin.