Bath Bomb Pricing Breakdown

How much does it cost to make each bath bomb cupcake?

Recently, a blog commenter asked great question about these bath bomb cupcakes and pricing them effectively. I’ve gone through and priced out all the materials either from Bramble Berry, or if we don’t carry it (bulk Cream of Tatar for example), priced from Amazon.com or your local Cash and Carry.

Citric Acid 50 lbs. $95 .12/oz

Baking Soda 12 lbs $18.29 .09/oz

Color 20 ml $7.65 .38/ml

Fragrance 16 oz. $24 .67/ounce

Cupcake Wrapper 50 $2.49 0.05/each

Powdered Sugar 4 lbs. $9.99 .16/ounce

Meringue 10 lbs $65.00 .40625/oz.

Fragrance 16 oz. $24 .67/oz.

Vanilla Color Stabilizer 8 oz. $5.64 0.71/oz

SLS 15 lb $52.50 .22/oz.

Cream of Tartar 15 oz. $8.99 .59/ounce

Jojoba Oil 7 lbs. $62.30 .56/ounce

Witch Hazel 7 lbs. $14 .13/ounce

Doing the math (and dividing the entire recipe to make 24 bath bomb cupcakes) I came up with this...

12 oz. Meringue: $4.92
14 oz. SLS: $3.08
4 oz. Jojoba: $2.24
16 oz. Powdered Sugar: $2.56
.7 oz. Cream of Tartar: $0.41
.5 oz. Fragrance Oil: $0.34
.5 oz. Vanilla Color Stabilizer: $0.35
32 oz. Citric Acid: $3.84
64 oz. Baking Soda: $5.76
Witch Hazel: $0.06
Fragrance: $0.35
Cupcake Liner: $0.05
Labcolor: $0.15

The total is $24.11 or right around $1 in ingredients for the bath bomb cupcakes.

I can make the entire recipe in about 1 hour total (including set up and clean up). Assuming I value my time at $28 per hour, this adds another $1.16 per cupcake bringing the total for the bath bomb cupcake to $2.16 with labor and ingredients. Assuming your overhead allocation rate (This is a fancy term that means you figure out your total overhead and divide by the number of units you make every year and then add this small figure to the total) runs under $.10 per cupcake and the wrapping ends up being $.50 or less (hang tag $.05, bag $.07, ribbon $.03) the total for your bath bomb cupcake is well under $2.75 with your overhead totally worked in. Assuming you wholesale the cuppies for $3.00, that is a 8.3% pre-tax net profit on each cupcake. You could make that 8.3% grow to 25% if you outsourced your labor to a $8/hour employee. And, if you sold these for the going retail rate of $7-$8 per cupcake bath fizzy? Over 100% net profit rate.

8.3% - 25% net profit on a product is adequate (8.3%) to wow! (25%) and 100% net profit is a triple wow! wow! wow!