4 ms·

It may seem backwards, but it is forwards: Total ingredient cost for a $3 loaf is about $0.75. Adding in cracked grains or seeds brings it to c. $1.50 for a $

It may seem backwards, but it is forwards: Total ingredient cost for a $3 loaf is about $0.75. Adding in cracked grains or seeds brings it to c. $1.50 for a $5-6 loaf. Total ingredient cost for a $20 pizza is about $3. This is for a "good" pizza. A Pizza Hut-grade pizza is probably $1.50-$2.00 in ingredients and sells for $9-10. Now: bakeries do not sell every loaf of bread they bake. Quite a bit of bread goes stale, gets made into breadcrumbs, thrown out, sold at discount, donated to food pantries. Pizza has much less spoilage because of the process: most ingredients, including the dough, are refrigerated. The dough needs 48h (could be as short as 24h) to ferment, but then stays good in the fridge for days. As long as you have a big enough fridge, the inventory problem is pretty simple to manage. Cured meats (sausage, pepperoni) have a long shelf life with refrigeration, as does cheese. Vegetables also last for days. The end result is that (albeit with some added costs from refrigeration) you're able to make the products on-demand as the orders come in. With bread, the product must be prepared well in advance and there's more waste. A well-run pizzeria is pretty lean on labor, too. Plenty of pizzerias get by profitably with one or two men in the kitchen and one man at the counter. But if you don't believe me, believe the market: most bread is produced industrially, sealed in plastic, and shipped to retailers on trucks. Small profitable pizzerias are ubiquitous.

phonypc 5y ago
I'd love to see how one comes to these number. $0.75 is either very expensive flour, or a very large loaf sold too cheaply. Adding seeds (at what, 5-10% of the weight of the flour?) to a loaf doubles the ingredient cost? Glancing at bulk commercial prices, sesame seeds added at (the unrealistically high) 20% of a loaf made with 500g flour should be about $0.29. Poppy seeds almost gets you there if you use the unusually high 2018 price, at $0.65. $3 of bulk part-skim mozzarella is generously something like 250g worth. That's skimpy for a large pizza. The rest of the ingredients for this "good" pizza are free? A bakery that's throwing out too much is baking too much, or there's no market for their bread. That's nothing to do with the margin on bread being thin. Small profitable bakeries are ubiquitous where there's a market for them. See: France.
- i_am_proteus 5y ago
  Typically the method used to get these numbers is arithmetic. HG flour is $22 per 50# wholesale, bulk, delivered. Organic HG is $48 for the same. A bag of flour is about 30 loaves (we scale recipes to the 50# bag). Typically the artisanal seed stuff will get the higher grade flour. Shredded mozzarella is $52 per 20# wholesale, bulk, delivered. Et cetera. Certainly if you are in a different market, the economics could be different. Hope this helps you understand.
  - phonypc 5y ago
    Okay. What I'm gathering from this is that if one tries to sell artisan bread at prices competitive with Wonderbread, and overcharges for bottom-barrel pizza cheese, one might fall under the illusion that low margin items are high and vice versa. Excuse my spiciness, but you did just hit me with that arithmetic quip.
    - i_am_proteus 5y ago
      The cheese is good quality. These are the real economics of the market in a major USA East Coast city. My friend's been profitable for decades. Grocers out here sell pretty good loaves as loss leaders; you can call something artisanal all day long, but if you're charging too much, you're not competitive.
    - esyir 5y ago
      A 5 buck loaf is certainly not in the wonderbread territory. Its both a mix of far more expensive and smaller in size.
      - phonypc 5y ago
        A $3 loaf was described above. 50lb bag of flour making 30 loaves. At a pretty standard 60% hydration, the resulting loaf is both heavier and cheaper by weight than a loaf of Wonderbread usually is. I suppose it could end up substantially smaller in volume if poorly made.
- 5y ago

phonypc 5y ago

I'd love to see how one comes to these number. $0.75 is either very expensive flour, or a very large loaf sold too cheaply. Adding seeds (at what, 5-10% of the weight of the flour?) to a loaf doubles the ingredient cost? Glancing at bulk commercial prices, sesame seeds added at (the unrealistically high) 20% of a loaf made with 500g flour should be about $0.29. Poppy seeds almost gets you there if you use the unusually high 2018 price, at $0.65. $3 of bulk part-skim mozzarella is generously something like 250g worth. That's skimpy for a large pizza. The rest of the ingredients for this "good" pizza are free? A bakery that's throwing out too much is baking too much, or there's no market for their bread. That's nothing to do with the margin on bread being thin. Small profitable bakeries are ubiquitous where there's a market for them. See: France.

i_am_proteus 5y ago
Typically the method used to get these numbers is arithmetic. HG flour is $22 per 50# wholesale, bulk, delivered. Organic HG is $48 for the same. A bag of flour is about 30 loaves (we scale recipes to the 50# bag). Typically the artisanal seed stuff will get the higher grade flour. Shredded mozzarella is $52 per 20# wholesale, bulk, delivered. Et cetera. Certainly if you are in a different market, the economics could be different. Hope this helps you understand.
- phonypc 5y ago
  Okay. What I'm gathering from this is that if one tries to sell artisan bread at prices competitive with Wonderbread, and overcharges for bottom-barrel pizza cheese, one might fall under the illusion that low margin items are high and vice versa. Excuse my spiciness, but you did just hit me with that arithmetic quip.
  - i_am_proteus 5y ago
    The cheese is good quality. These are the real economics of the market in a major USA East Coast city. My friend's been profitable for decades. Grocers out here sell pretty good loaves as loss leaders; you can call something artisanal all day long, but if you're charging too much, you're not competitive.
  - esyir 5y ago
    A 5 buck loaf is certainly not in the wonderbread territory. Its both a mix of far more expensive and smaller in size.
    - phonypc 5y ago
      A $3 loaf was described above. 50lb bag of flour making 30 loaves. At a pretty standard 60% hydration, the resulting loaf is both heavier and cheaper by weight than a loaf of Wonderbread usually is. I suppose it could end up substantially smaller in volume if poorly made.
5y ago