To want to start a brownie making buisness

[jdoe8]

Just watching the apprentice and she makes rocky road for 19p and sells it for £3.00 a slice. She's turning over 80k a year and making 40k profit. Sounds very well paid for what it is. Has anyone else tried it?

[jdoe8]

Thanks that costing on digital spy was interesting.

[Afternoondelights]

I did this for five years while the dc were little. It can be done and you can make a profit BUT it's bloody hard work on all sorts of levels - the costing, the finding of cheaper ingredients, the equipment, the marketing, the packaging, the health and safety regs, etc etc. after five years I had built up a good reputation, knew what sold well and what my margins were, had regular customers and a good routine built up. But it was such hard work I was at a stage where I needed to upscale or stop. So I stopped, and got my life back

[SherlockPotter]

Why not? What have you got to lose?

There's a brownie maker/seller in the East Midlands, who have just opened their first shop!

[Sunnymeg]

BarbaraofSeville, it will depend on which supplier she uses, we have family who runs a similar type of operation supplying farm shops and they manage to source their ingredients cheaply enough. Whatever she is making then with, everyone seemed unanimous in their praise so she may well be onto something.

[BertrandRussell]

I only still do it because I have a couple of regular customers.

[glueandstick]

I used to do this (and cakes)

My honest honest feeling is only do it if you REALLY love it.

It's back breaking, selling to the public is sodding hard work and the returns diminished hugely over the years as you're undercut by the people who have no idea about proper business and can't possibly make a profit. It's cut throat.

[Minesril]

Mary Berry's recipe is margarine, choc chips and chocolate powder (among other things!) So are pretty cheap too. And are lovely!

Tray bakes generally are cheap and easy to make and taste great. It's a great idea, and everyone is fed up of cupcakes now!

I really liked Alana, glad she won.

[BikeRunSki]

Digital Spy. Apparently she used cooking chocolate.

[BikeRunSki]

I heard her on Five Live this morning. Her dad came into a lump sum, either an inheritance or some injury compensation, which they used to build the extra kitchen as an extension. So I guess this masks the true start up costs a bit.

[GoneGirl1234]

I heard 19p per slice too. I watched You're Hired after the final & I think her dad said they built her a kitchen on their property after getting sick of coming home and finding chocolate all over the place. Perhaps she has a couple of professional sized ovens so she can properly bulk cook and get economies of scale?

Also thought maybe the 19p per item is an average across the board? She doesn't just make brownies, she's got a range of tray bakes inc something that looked like flapjacks, I'd imagine some of those are much cheaper to make?

Good for her anyway, I think what she's achieved by age 24 is amazing.

[BigGreenOlives]

The hummingbird brownie recipe is 100g cocoa with 5 eggs, 120g flour, 500g sugar, 250g butter rather than chocolate. I use that as it's so much cheaper than the chocolate heavy recipes & they are really good.

[DailyFail1]

I thought lidl chocolate was fine belgian chocolate?

[TondelayaDellaVentamiglia]

i'd imagine she is being very economical with the truth....we're all presuming lovely rich Belgian chocolate, she is probably whipping over to the first lidl she finds over the border and buying up all their cheapo chocolate.

[jdoe8]

It's defo 19p, she wouldn't be selling a food item to a wholesaler for a 10% markup.

She must have some good contacts for wholesale cheap luxury Belgium chocolate. I have heard that for some items supermarkets are the cheapest places

[BarbaraofSeville]

Wholesale costs won't be significantly cheaper than supermarkets. The likes of Makro are more expensive than places like Aldi.

[Sunnymeg]

It may be economy of scale. Presumably she buys her ingredients in bulk from a specialist supplier and as she only offers 6 different types of cake, and never mentioned expanding the range that would keep the ingredient cost down that way as well. It's a bit different to us buying our ingredients in a supermarket.

[19lottie82]

Brownies are quite expensive to make as each tray requires 300g dark chocolate, 5 eggs and a 250g block of butter. (And also flour, sugar and vanilla extract). That's about £4 a tray minimum.

[Jellybean83]

I still had the interview episode on my planner, just checked she did say 19p, I heard wrong.

Don't know how she can use the 'finest Belgian chocolate' and make them that cheap, butter isn't exactly cheap either. Either way I hope they make their way to Scotland so I can try them.

[DailyFail1]

£3-4 for a single premium slice/cake is about right. Lola's cupcakes sell boxes of 6 for approx £18. Their competitors are Starbucks/Costa/specialist cake makers etc not necessary the local bakery who can mass produce.

[RebelandaStunner]

I heard it as 19p to make. She then sells it for £1 to a cafe or whatever.
They sell it for £3.
All the cafes around here sell for that price eating in, food festivals, delis, bakeries a tad cheaper.
They looked good, she has done well.

[BeautyGoesToBenidorm]

She must be using very cheap ingredients - brownies always cost me a fucking fortune to make, but then again, I make cheesecake swirl ones with all sorts of gubbins in

[BigGreenOlives]

I think a lot of people do - we have a local cafe which sells brownies etc for £2.75 each & is always busy. I prefer to spend my disposable income on other items but each to his own.

[WhoKnowsWhereTheT1meG0es]

I might pay £3 in a NT or other nice café, but not on a regular basis from a deli which was one of the main thrusts of her pitch.

[foxessocks]

In her presentation at the end I'm pretty sure she said £1 a slice to make £3 to sell...So that would make sense of she has said 90p earlier not 19p...

[BarbaraofSeville]

£3 is about the average price charged for a nice piece of cake in most coffee shops, at farmers' markets, festivals, tourist venues and other similar places.

It is a lot for what you get, but the fact is that's what it costs and these things sell, suggests that enough people are willing to pay that amount.