Worked Numbers
How Much to Charge for Charcuterie Boards Per Person, Worked Through
How much to charge for charcuterie boards per person comes from three things: the food on one guest’s share, with what you buy and never serve charged in; your own time at the hourly floor your year needs; and the box, plus a margin. In the illustrative example below, food is $5.89 per person, a charcuterie board for 20 people costs $195.66 to make, and a 25% margin prices it at $260.88, or $13.04 per person.
None of these are market prices. Every portion, price and minute belongs to one made-up board maker, and each is meant to be replaced with your own. How you handle, store and label food is set by your local food rules, not by this arithmetic.
The charcuterie pricing formula
food per person = sum of (ounces per guest / 16 x price per lb)
/ (1 - share of food bought and not served)
your time = (fixed minutes + minutes per guest x guests) / 60
x hourly floor
board cost = your time + guests x food per person + packaging
board price = board cost / (1 - margin)
price per person = board price / guests
Step 1: your hourly floor
The example maker wants $30,000 a year kept after a 20% tax set-aside and carries $6,000 of business costs: kitchen rent, permits, insurance, knives, website, advertising. That needs $43,500.00 of revenue. They book 20 hours a week of shopping, prep, building and delivery for 46 weeks; cancels take 5%, leaving 874 paid hours. The floor is $49.77 for every paid hour. Another 8 hours a week of unbilled driving, messages, quotes and invoicing mean the maker keeps $23.29 per hour actually worked. Only count time here that no order pays for; minutes you price into each board belong in step 4.
Step 2: food per person
Portions are the maker’s own, weighed, not taken from anyone’s chart:
| Item | Ounces per guest | Price per lb | Per guest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheese | 2 | $12.00 | $1.50 |
| Cured meat | 2 | $16.00 | $2.00 |
| Crackers and bread | 1.6 | $6.00 | $0.60 |
| Fruit and vegetables | 2 | $4.00 | $0.50 |
| Nuts, spreads and extras | 1 | $11.20 | $0.70 |
| Food served | 8.6 | $5.30 | |
| Bought and not served, at 10% of what you buy | $0.59 | ||
| Ingredient cost per person | $5.89 |
8.6 ounces a guest costs $5.30 served. But whole packages, trimmed rinds and the wedge left over mean 10% of what the maker buys is never served, so each guest carries $0.59 more. Note the arithmetic: the allowance is a share of what you buy, so the served cost is divided by (1 - 10%), giving $5.89. Adding 10% on top would give $5.83 and under-charge every guest.
Step 3: packaging
A disposable box with liner, wrap, label, napkins and picks is $11.50 an order. A $60.00 returnable board over 20 orders wears $3.00 an order, but 12 minutes of washing and drying at the floor is $9.95, so the returnable board comes to $15.45: the disposable box costs $3.95 less here. The washing, not the board, is the bigger part. A $60.00 deposit covers a board that never comes back.
Step 4: a charcuterie board for 20 people
The maker spends 30 fixed minutes on each board (planning, shopping, layout, photos) and 2.5 minutes per guest slicing, folding and arranging. For 20 guests that is 1.33 hours:
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Your time: (30 + 2.5 x 20) minutes at the $49.77 floor | $66.36 |
| Food: 20 x $5.89 | $117.80 |
| Disposable box, wrap and extras | $11.50 |
| Board cost | $195.66 |
| Price at a 25% margin | $260.88 |
| Per person | $13.04 |
Food is 45% of that price. Your time is less than the food, but it is the line a food-cost multiple leaves out.
Price per person by guest count
The same formula for one board at three sizes:
| Guests on one board | Your hours | Board price | Per person |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 0.92 | $154.70 | $15.47 |
| 20 | 1.33 | $260.88 | $13.04 |
| 50 | 2.58 | $579.43 | $11.59 |
The fixed minutes and the box spread thinner as the board grows, so the per-person price falls from $15.47 for 10 to $11.59 for 50. It never falls below $10.62, the food and building minutes one guest takes, with the margin on. Quote large boards from the formula rather than multiplying a small board’s per-person price.
A grazing table for 50
A table is a board plus a trip. The example builds at a slightly quicker pace per guest, then adds setup and breakdown at the venue and two round trips (drop-off and pickup):
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| 6.25 hours: building 2, on site 2.25, driving 2, at $49.77 | $311.06 |
| Food: 50 x $5.89 | $294.50 |
| 2 round trips x 24 miles x $0.60 | $28.80 |
| Table supplies | $35.00 |
| Event cost | $669.36 |
| Price at a 25% margin | $892.48 |
| Per guest | $17.85 |
That is $17.85 a guest, more than the $13.04 board for 20 and the $11.59 board for 50. The site and drive hours do it: without them, the same table would be $12.21 a guest.
The insight: the leftover cheese is the hidden cost
The spoilage share is a guess until you test it. On one finished 20-guest order, 20 guests at $5.30 put $106.00 of food on the board, but whole packages cost $128.00: $22.00 bought and not served. The 10% allowance charged $11.80 of it, leaving $10.20 unpaid. The share that would have covered this order is 17.2%. Cheese you keep, eat or give away is still food bought for that order. Check a few orders this way and set the allowance from your receipts, not from a round number.
Classes, and did the order pay?
A class works the same way. The example sells 9 of 12 seats, spends 6 hours on prep, teaching and cleanup, pays a $120.00 venue fee and gives each attendee $15.00 of food and board. At a 25% margin a seat is $82.02, and 7 sold seats cover the time, venue and kits.
And afterward: the example sold that board for $260.00. It took 1.75 hours, with the $128.00 of food bought, packaging, 10 miles and a 3% card fee. That leaves $106.70, or $60.97 an hour against the $49.77 floor, so it cleared. The price that pays exactly the floor on those hours was $239.79. Those 1.75 hours, delivery included, ran past the 1.33 hours priced in step 4, so log real hours and feed them back into your minutes, and price delivery as its own line.
How these were calculated
Food per person is the sum of ounces per guest / 16 x price per pound for each item, divided by (1 - the share of food bought and not served). The floor is (income / (1 - tax set-aside) + business costs) / (booked hours x (1 - lost share) x weeks). A board is (fixed minutes + minutes per guest x guests) / 60 x floor, plus guests x food per person, plus packaging, divided by (1 - margin). Figures carried between steps are carried as the spreadsheet shows them, to the cent. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the product below and once by an independent program that builds a board guest by guest and adds class seats one at a time, and the two agree; the 10 and 50 guest rows use the same formula at counts the pack’s example does not show. All inputs are illustrative, not market prices or recommended portions. None of this is financial, legal, tax or food-safety advice.
To run this on your own portions, prices and year, the pack below has eight linked calculators, from the hourly floor to a check on whether a finished order paid.