How to Price Chocolates: A UK Guide
Cornerstone chocolatier guide. From a batch of couverture to a price per piece and per box that pays for the tempering.
The short answer
To price chocolates, cost a whole batch of couverture and fillings, add the tempering, moulds and setup that cost the same however many pieces come out, add your finishing time per piece, then divide by the pieces the batch actually yields and apply your margin. Chocolate is labour-heavy relative to its ingredients, so pricing on cocoa cost alone reliably underpays the maker.
Step by step
- Cost a whole batch, not a piece. Couverture, fillings, cream, flavourings and colours for the batch as you actually make it. Buying is done in kilos, so cost in them.
- Set the yield to good pieces. The pieces you will sell, after rejected shells and trimmings. A 48-cavity mould does not yield 48 sellable chocolates.
- Add tempering, moulds and setup. This is the batch cost, and it is the one that punishes small runs. It takes much the same time whether the batch is 40 pieces or 400.
- Add finishing time per piece. Decorating, capping, hand-rolling. This one genuinely scales with the count, so it belongs per piece.
- Divide, then apply your margin. You get a cost per piece. A box is that figure times the pieces in it, plus the box, insert and ribbon.
Worked example: a 48 piece batch of salted caramels
One mould run, tempered once, hand-capped and finished.
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Couverture and fillings for the batch | £18.40 |
| Tempering, moulds and setup | £22.00 |
| Finishing, 24 minutes at £14 | £5.60 |
| Foil cases, 48 at 9p | £4.32 |
| Total for the batch | £50.32 |
| Good pieces after rejects | 44 |
| Cost per piece | £1.14 |
| Priced at 70% margin | £3.81 |
| A box of 12 (12 x £3.81) plus a £1.10 box | £46.82 |
The same batch yielding only 30 good pieces costs £1.68 a piece, because the tempering and moulds do not shrink with the reject rate. Yield is a margin lever, not just a quality one.
Why it matters
Cocoa is a traded commodity and couverture prices move sharply, but the bigger risk for a chocolatier is that the batch costs, the tempering and the setup, are invisible in an ingredient-led price. Costing the batch once and recalculating when couverture moves is what keeps the hours paid.