Pit, I have an inquiry from someone asking me to smoke a whole brisket for them. I’m trying to figure out how to price it. Do any of you have any recommendations? Reference material is helpful as I’m hoping to start selling more bbq soon!
I was not sure where to put this, so feel free to move it to the correct spot moderators!
Large Big Green Egg, Weber Performer Deluxe, Weber Smokey Joe Silver, Fireboard Drive, 3 DigiQs, lots of Thermapens, and too much other stuff to mention.
I’m pretty sure that food cost should be 1/3 the final price. So, cost of brisket, rub, and anything else like injections, etc. if you have $30 invested, then $90.
Check price per pound of a local BBQ joint and figure it on an estimate of the finished product. One question to think about is whether your friend wants your BBQ or a bargain. I just checked a local place that does good prime brisket - price $31.98 a pound. Ten pounds of cooked prime brisket - $319.
Folks’ perception of the cost of prepared food hasn’t caught up to the actual cost.
And I’m including myself here. An onion costs A FREAKIN’ DOLLAR. For AN ONION. I pay it, but it still doesn’t register.
"Folks’ perception of the cost of prepared food hasn’t caught up to the actual cost."
100% correct statement. I have 2 close friends in the food industry/restaurant business. Amazing what their food costs are now and no one believes it 🤷♂️
A 15 pound brisket at Costco would be $3 or $4 a pound so $45 to $60. This would yield maybe 10 pounds of finished product. If we assume $25 a pound for cooked brisket that would be $250. If we assume food costs are a third of the price (a common rule of thumb for successful restaurants) that would put the price between $150 and $200.
For comparison, a 5 pound brisket from Snow’s BBQ off Goldbelly is $230.
Rub and other seasonings are foods that should be included in calculating cost. Remember, when you are figuring out your per pound price, you are selling cooked meat. That means a 15 pound Costco brisket that you trimmed 4 or 5 pounds of fat off of and then shrank another 2 or 3 pounds while cooking is now somewhere between 7 and 9 pounds. Do your pricing accordingly.
$27 a pound for cooked brisket would probably be a fair price considering your rubs charcoal, the foil to wrap and your labor of being tied to the pit. So, ten pounds of cooked brisket would be $270 divided by a prep and cook time of 15 hours would be about $18 an hour.
Are you trying to get a business off the ground? If so, maybe start a little cheaper until you get established to bet your name out there, if you can afford to.
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Meat is generally a no-go for cottage sales. J-Melt
If not cooking outdoors, I am cooking on the stovetop with my 14" carbon steel wok, 12" CI skillet, or in the oven with my two Lodge CI pizza pans, or two dutch ovens. I've also got a nifty Lodge carbon steel grill pan that rocks for veggies outdoors.
The only place around here that sells brisket by the pound is $26.95. HOWEVER, unless you've already had the conversation, I imagine your friend is expecting you to do it for cost. You may want to manage expectations with a conversation first. And your cost is the brisket, plus a bag of quality lump charcoal and a few hunks of smoking wood, if you are smoking on charcoal like I do. And your time to manage the cook.
Back when I was smoking butts for the high school cheerleaders as a fundraiser (yes, I was a cheerleading dad!), we were picking up butts at Costco for about $8 each, and selling them for $25 or $30 in the fundraiser. Along with a bunch of Kingsford charcoal, and some oak from the wood pile for smoking wood. And my labor and lack of sleep was apparently "free" in those days, haha. These days a butt costs more, and the ones I see the high school fundraisers selling are in the $40+ range.
After smoking 84 butts once by myself with no help, I didn't smoke another one, even for myself, for several years, and was done with helping out the high school in that area. Other folks they used after me charged them $5 per butt for their labor in smoking the butts, plus fuel cost.
Personally, since you are NOT Aaron Franklin, I don't see justifying $30+ per pound pricing on finished product. As an amateur brisket cook in your backyard, without a food license or permit, I think you should charge cost (meat, fuel, wood), then at most double it to cover your time and hassle. Face it - you are not watching that thing for the full 12-18 hour cook. It's prep, dry brine, rub, then onto the smoker. Then off the smoker into cambro. You have a couple of hours of active time, rest is watching your thermometer readout and adjusting vents.
I think Jim’s point regarding what the customer expects to pay overrides any rule of thumb we have suggested thus far. If he expects to pay cost or $60, there is no way he is paying $150. If he is planning to pay $150, then he probably thinking along the same lines as you.
Definitely makes sense! Sad you got burnt so bad. I definitely want to catch the sweet spot somewhere between giving too good of a deal in one end and being way too cocky about my meat on the other end. I like the 2x the meat price as a start.
I have made it clear to the buyer that once we figure out the cost of the meat that I then need to do math to figure out cost of labor. I told him that I’m looking at what other places charge before giving a price.
J-Melt I didn’t get burnt, more burnt out. I was volunteering to smoke those butts, but expected others to stay and help me man 3 smokers and 84 butts overnight. Sadly it was me and a dog in front of a school, with the cops checking on what the smoke was about around 3am, wanting samples that I couldn’t give them at that point…
I’ve been cooking for church the last couple of years and have only ever asked for cost of supplies. I’m definitely going to keep doing that for church, but I would love to make a little off it if others are willing to pay. I’ve had several people tell me I should move towards cooking as a side hustle.
Update. My self employed piano teaching wife is really passionate about not under charging for anything that takes skill to execute. We decided to stay with a high offer and go lower if needed. I offered it at $25.50 per pound and his response was that he only wanted to spend $75 max. I told him that I would be willing to do 4 pounds cooked for that price at $18.75 per pound. He agreed and would have given me the money today if I had been at work!
Major win for me as I’m already planning on doing a full packer for fun as a lunch for my work. I’ll be able to do the one for work, plus the meat for the bulk sale, plus meat for my siblings coming in town that day, all in the same cook. It will be my first time doing two briskets at once on the Bronco (which probably justifies the lower price since I’m still in experimental phase with my new cooker)
I've had the privilege of knowing and/or interviewing several of the top pitmasters here in Texas and they all universally say the same thing when it comes to sliced brisket. YOU CAN'T CHARGE ENOUGH to cover your costs. Here locally sliced brisket goes somewhere in the $30-32/pound range. That doesn't even begin to cover the cost of the product, the employee hours to cook it, the service employees who have to slice it and collect the money, the guy in the back who does the dishes, the waste, the rent on the store, the utility bills, the wood it takes to smoke it, etc. etc. All that before they even make a dime.
Bottom line, sliced brisket is the proverbial lost leader, it gets them in the joint so they can also sell you a bottle of beer which they make 60% profit on or other such commodities.
Having said all that, get as much as you can. The doubling of your cost is what I used to charge when I did them (don't do them much any more) but tripling sure isn't out of the question.
One last thing to remember, if you plan on doing this on a regular basis, be careful. Certain states like California heavily regulate and frown upon backyard food enterprises. You don't want the health department knocking at your door. keep it on the 'down low'. If its a one off, no worries.
Wow, makes unfortunate sense. I used to manage a coffee shop and the price of supplies vs price of buying a latte is insane. Then after adding in all the labor, rent and such makes it so making a profit is super difficult.
Thankfully Chicago streamlined the process to get a cottage license because of the pandemic. I really need to get on applying for it once I can get hold of my newly renewed manager license. Definitely don’t want health inspectors from my great greedy city trying to get me…
Don't forget to add in the costs of doing business, any licenses or inspections your state requires is an expense, obviously for a first few customers that cost is a loss to you if you do it "right" but long term those costs should be a % spread based on estimated cooks per year.
Welp, it’s looks like I missed the fact that Illinois is not cool with a cottage business selling meat. They don’t inspect cottage businesses, so they don’t want them selling food that can easily cause food poisoning if handled incorrectly.
I’m in no position to rent a kitchen it by a good truck and risk the loss of going all in like that.
Sad, but I definitely get it. Guess I will stick to doing it at cost for church and for free for family and friends as always! Thank y’all for help with this!
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