Selling Recipes

[Jensen]

A few months ago, a very good friend of mine started planning a new hip and cool coffee shop. He asked me if I would develop a bunch of sandwich recipes for it and I agreed.

Long story short...the landlord of the coffee shop locale made the lease transfer process untenable and so the whole plan was put on hold. In the meantime, said friend talked to the current coffee shop owner; she's interested in buying my sandwich recipes.

Obviously, I need to talk to her to see how many she wants and also what type (I roughed out ideas for three different types of sandwiches, at least one of which probably wouldn't work in the current setting). My biggest problem is that I have no idea how much to charge for the recipes!

Can anyone help me?

[LaurieB]

This is a very interesting topic/subject/idea.

A couple of favorite sandwhiches in our house today came from ones we ate between 5 and 10 years ago. Or came from ideas I came across a while ago.

Can you copywrite food?

[highchef]

did you have a resturant in the past? Were they sucessful recipies at some point? ie, do they have a legacy, or are they just your good made up sandwiches? If there's a legacy, you've made them before and your name is attached to them either in the recipe itself or the menu, then you have to figure out what it meant to you. If you developed these recipes for her, then she's either paying for your time or your recipes. That said I'd say 200 bucks/recipe would be a great deal for both of you if it's just something you came up with out of the blue...

[Gifted Gourmet]

there may be something of value here ...

[Jensen]

Thanks all!

[Chris Amirault]

Jen, what did you decide?

[chefette]

I think that you are not so much selling the recipe as selling the development

so as you would in a consulting project - charge for the hours worked

or by the project

[Jensen]

Well, I have to talk to the woman first and see which, if any, of the types of sandwiches she's interested in.

Then, taking in consideration that I am an amateur at this, I decided I will offer the recipes at half of what Highchef suggested...100 per recipe. I think that will be fair for my time, which as chefette pointed out is really what I'll be offering.