How I Actually Price My Cookies (And Why I Almost Didn't)
For years, I priced my cookies the way most of us do when we're starting out: I guessed. I looked at what a friend was charging, knocked a little off because I didn't want to seem greedy, and called it a price.
I started around $25 a dozen. I remember exactly how that number felt — a little too high to say out loud, and somehow still not enough to cover what I'd actually put into the order. That's the trap. When you don't know your real numbers, every price feels made up, because it is.
What changed wasn't that I got braver. It's that I finally sat down and did the math — real math, not a guess dressed up as a decision. Ingredients. Packaging. The hour I spent piping when I could've been doing anything else. Once I could see the actual cost of a dozen cookies in front of me, pricing stopped being a feelings decision and started being a numbers decision. And numbers don't flinch the way I used to.
That's the part nobody tells you when you're starting out: the fear isn't really about the price. It's about not trusting that you've earned it. You can't charge with confidence off a guess — but you can charge with confidence off a number you calculated yourself and know is true.
I raised my prices as my skill and my confidence caught up with each other. Today I start at $65 a dozen. I didn't lose the business over it. If anything, I lost the customers who were only ever there for the $25 version — and kept the ones who wanted what I was actually making.
If you're standing where I was — bakery on the side, a stack of “you should sell these” comments, and absolutely no idea what to actually charge — you don't need more confidence first. You need the math first. The confidence comes after, once the number in front of you is one you calculated instead of one you flinched into.
That's exactly why I built the pricing template I now use for every product I sell. It walks you through your real costs — ingredients, packaging, your time — so the price you land on is one you can stand behind, not one you're hoping nobody questions.
→ Grab the Price It Right template here: PRICING CALCULATOR TEMPLATE
You don't have to have it all figured out to start pricing like a real business. You just need one honest number to start from. This is how you get it.
Want a more indepth experience join the Price it Right Course for templates and video lessons on pricing products:
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