Price a prepaid plan upward from your costs, never downward from a competitor's menu. Enter what one meal costs you and the food cost percentage you want to hit, and this returns the price per meal, per week and per month, plus what you actually keep. A competitor's price tells you what their kitchen can bear, not what yours can.
Delivery is per meal here. If you deliver a whole day's bag in one drop, divide the drop cost by the number of meals in the bag.
| Price | 0.00 |
| Ingredients | 0.00 |
| Packaging, labour, delivery | 0.00 |
| Contribution per meal | 0.00 |
| Contribution per subscriber per month | 0.00 |
The common mistake is opening a competitor's site, taking their weekly price and shaving a little off it. That sets your price using their food cost, their kitchen rent and their volume, none of which you have. If their ingredients cost less than yours because they buy ten times more, matching their price hands them the customer and hands you the loss.
Pricing upward is the opposite: your cost is the floor, your target percentage sets the multiple, and the market only tells you whether the result is sellable. If it is not, the answer is a different dish or a different portion, not a thinner margin.
A prepaid plan is bought once and eaten for a week, so the number a customer actually judges is the weekly figure, not the per-meal one. Quote the week.
Food cost calculator — start here if you do not yet know what one meal costs you.
How to price meal prep meals in a prepaid model — the full method behind this calculator.
How many customers a meal prep business needs to break even — once the price is set, this is the next number.
