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Jim D.

Jim D.


Per request of moderator, I removed a sentence so as to separate this topic from an unrelated one.

6 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:


What would you consider an average per-piece price? I'm not at a point where I'm advertising or considering it a home business yet, I still want to get better at a lot of things before I take that step, but I get occasional requests and I've been charging $10 (Canadian) for a 6 piece box. That works out to about $1.67 Canadian - $1.27 US - per piece. I always cringe just a little when telling people the price because I'm afraid they'll think it's too much but I'm not sure I'd consider it worth doing for much less. And I'm certainly not at the level of most of the people here or those doing it as a full time business.

 

I think the discussion of pricing is a very interesting topic.  I live in a small city in an area where people are quite frugal (a nice word for what I am actually thinking); to add to the perspective, there is a Hershey factory in the area. A pastry chef in town charges (the last I knew) around $1.60 per piece but less for larger size boxes. As I am retired and too old to start an actual business enterprise, I began making chocolates as a hobby and I charge considerably less. Some people who have previously lived in metropolitan areas comment on my low prices, but most people here would not pay a lot more. I am an actual licensed business technically speaking (paying all the taxes and fees--including a "litter tax," of all things), but the U.S. Internal Revenue Service considers what I do a hobby. I have tried several times to calculate the cost per chocolate, but it is quite complicated (if I buy several pounds of hazelnuts and use one to top each piece, how much is each nut costing?--far too much work to figure that out, especially since it is not relevant to my situation, though I am sure others on the forum have gone through this). I don't know what sort of area economically you live in, but $1.27 per piece sounds quite reasonable, probably low if you have invested in equipment, which can be quite expensive. It seems to me that potential customers fall into two categories: either they know what good chocolate tastes like and therefore believe $1.27 is a bargain or they think Hershey's chocolate is just fine and so assume you must be crazy to charge so much. The usual advice given to businesses is not to set prices too low in the beginning because customers resist a noticeable increase later on.

Jim D.

Jim D.

2 hours ago, Tri2Cook said:


What would you consider an average per-piece price? I'm not at a point where I'm advertising or considering it a home business yet, I still want to get better at a lot of things before I take that step, but I get occasional requests and I've been charging $10 (Canadian) for a 6 piece box. That works out to about $1.67 Canadian - $1.27 US - per piece. I always cringe just a little when telling people the price because I'm afraid they'll think it's too much but I'm not sure I'd consider it worth doing for much less. And I'm certainly not at the level of most of the people here or those doing it as a full time business.

 

I think the discussion of pricing is a very interesting topic. My straying into it earlier takes us rather far from the PDF topic, and the moderators may wish to move it to a new thread, but for now:  I live in a small city in an area where people are quite frugal (a nice word for what I am actually thinking); to add to the perspective, there is a Hershey factory in the area. A pastry chef in town charges (the last I knew) around $1.60 per piece but less for larger size boxes. As I am retired and too old to start an actual business enterprise, I began making chocolates as a hobby and I charge considerably less. Some people who have previously lived in metropolitan areas comment on my low prices, but most people here would not pay a lot more. I am an actual licensed business technically speaking (paying all the taxes and fees--including a "litter tax," of all things), but the U.S. Internal Revenue Service considers what I do a hobby. I have tried several times to calculate the cost per chocolate, but it is quite complicated (if I buy several pounds of hazelnuts and use one to top each piece, how much is each nut costing?--far too much work to figure that out, especially since it is not relevant to my situation, though I am sure others on the forum have gone through this). I don't know what sort of area economically you live in, but $1.27 per piece sounds quite reasonable, probably low if you have invested in equipment, which can be quite expensive. It seems to me that potential customers fall into two categories: either they know what good chocolate tastes like and therefore believe $1.27 is a bargain or they think Hershey's chocolate is just fine and so assume you must be crazy to charge so much. The usual advice given to businesses is not to set prices too low in the beginning because customers resist a noticeable increase later on.

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