What a kilo of smoked sausage really costs after curing and smoking
Curing and smoking take about a fifth of the weight out of a sausage. Here is how to cost the finished kilo, not the raw mix, and keep your margin.
Most sausage makers know their meat prices by heart. Fewer price on what comes out of the smokehouse. Curing, drying and smoking take water out of the sausage, so a finished kilo carries the cost of more than a kilo of raw mix.
Example: 10 kg of raw mix
| Item | Cost | |---|---| | 8 kg pork shoulder at £6 | £48.00 | | 2 kg back fat at £2 | £4.00 | | Curing salt and spices | £3.00 | | Casings | £3.00 | | Wood and energy | £5.00 | | 4 hours of labour at £12 | £48.00 | | Total | £111.00 |
After curing and smoking you weigh 7.8 kg. The process loss is 22%.
Raw kilo or finished kilo
On the raw mix, a kilo costs £111 ÷ 10 = £11.10. On what you sell, it costs £111 ÷ 7.8 = £14.23.
At a 35% margin: £14.23 ÷ (1 − 0.35) = £21.89, so £21.90 a kilo.
Price on the raw kilo and you get £17.10. Your real margin is then 17%, half of what you planned. If margin and markup still get mixed up, read the difference explained.
Measure your own loss
Loss depends on the product, the casing, the smokehouse and the season. Weigh the mix before it goes in and the sausage when it comes out, for three or four batches, and use the average. A cooked sausage loses less than a dry sausage that hangs for weeks.
Sausage keeps losing weight on the shelf too. If you sell by the piece, weigh again on sale day. The whole method, step by step, is in our pricing guide.
How Lagom does it
In Lagom you enter the recipe with its raw yield and the process loss in percent. Lagom counts the cost per kilo on what is left after the loss, so the price it suggests already covers it. Stages such as curing and smoking can run over several days, each with its own date.
More for butchers and sausage makers: Lagom for meat producers.