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Is Handmade Ravioli Profitable?

post #1 of 7
1/10/07 at 9:14am
Thread Starter 
A couple questions:

Wondering if anyone has had fresh handmade ravioli at their restaurant and if it was profitable or not. It would cost $12.00 an hour for the person making it. I would love to have it but I'm thinking it's just not going to be profitable enough. Also, how long can you freeze it with it still coming out nice and fresh tasting.

The other question is if you make it to sell, at say, a farmer's market, you would have to make it fresh the day before and not any earlier, correct? Are their preservatives you can put in the dough?

Thanks for any input!

Jen
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post #2 of 7
1/10/07 at 9:27am
"It would cost $12.00 an hour for the person making it"
You can make a lot of ravioli in an hour. I find it profitable and a good selling point. If I buy a pre-made ravioli then I am paying for someone else's labor and they are trying to make a profit on it. It is like when salesmen try to get me to buy their cheesecake for $28 when I can make one for about $4 plus labor. To me that is easy math!
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post #3 of 7
1/10/07 at 9:38am
I've made homemade rav's often. But then I offer them as a appetizer special. I can get a higher return on them and a batch goes far.
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post #4 of 7
1/10/07 at 9:56am
It all depends on how well you're set up, that is, how many you can make in an hour.

I make 11/2" x 11/2" puff pastry "Raviolis" for cocktails. Got a friend with a router table to make me a maple ravioli board, Looks like a shoji screen, just empty squares without a back, 10 squares across by 10 squares down. I roll my puff on the sheeter, lay ontop of the board, gently pat it down with a lightly floured bench brush so the pockets are revealed, pipe in my filling, eggwash, lay the next rolled sheet ontop, invert, chill, and then cut. Assembly time for 100 pcs is less than 5 minutes, but you still have to factor time for making and rolling the dough, making the filling, cutting and packaging.

My 2 cents would be to go with high-end fillings and charge a premium for them.
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post #5 of 7
1/10/07 at 10:19am
Thread Starter 
intersting idea foodpump. My husband is a woodworker so he could make me a board easily. My question is though, when you invert do you just use a flat cookie sheet or something? Can the board actually cut the dough after it's chilled? Also, if I was to sell them at a farmer's market, I would have to make them the day before because I wouldn't want to freeze them, right? or could I? I was just thinking that the customer who buys them may want to freeze them and they should only be frozen one time...
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post #6 of 7
1/10/07 at 10:27am
At the place I work, we just make exceptionally large ones so that two or three fit on an entree portion-sized plate. Larger ravioli are easier and faster to make.
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post #7 of 7
1/10/07 at 11:42am
Yanny, my board is made of strips 3/8" wide by 3/8" thick. I turn the whole sheet upside down on a cookie sheet, let rest and chill, and run a cutter wheel down the dough to separate them.
You could make the wood strips with a 45 degree chamfer on each side so that they would cut the dough automaticly when you press down on it, but I like the wide strips, offers me plenty of room to eggwash the dough and the dough will stick together before I cut them them. I have a sneaking suspicion that the two layers of freshly eggwashed dough would separte as it is being cut, but I can't confirm that.
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