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Cost for desserts not made in house?

1K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  azenjoys 
#1 ·
A question for chefs and industry types - if you were bringing in desserts from an outside source to sell on your menu for $8-10, what would you expect to pay for those desserts wholesale? Assume you'd be plating the items to order and maybe baking off pastry (that was already par-baked) daily, but all the prep and garnish were already made and ready to go.

Thanks!
 
#5 ·
My present restaurant (for another week and a half) does a mix of house-made and pre-made desserts.  I expect that this is the norm in most places except for 1) very high volume restaurants and 2) high-end/fine-dining.  If you're going a lot of business as CapeCodChef says you can likely justify the labor of having someone on staff doing scratch-made desserts. In a fine dining setting you can generally charge enough to cover your costs.  As a chef I'm okay with food cost being a little higher on a pre-made dessert since there's virtually no labor at all, just plate and garnish it.  I will often throw in a feature/daily dessert that's made by Sweet Street or Devonshire, something that may cost between $1.75-$3.50 per serving.  Food cost will vary a bit but the owner likes the desserts to run between $6-$9 give or take.  That is balanced out by desserts like my house-made Zeppole which has about $.90-$1.00 in food cost.
 
#6 ·
Thank you all for the replies! I'm actually the pastry chef and was trying to figure out what I should charge the restaurant - sorry that wasn't clear from my original post. I have a formula I use when working with private clients but this is my first wholesale account, so I wanted to get a sense of industry norms. 
 
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