🍯 Honey Pricing: A Unit Economics Playbook

About this simulation

Every jar of honey you sell carries a hidden stack of costs before a single pound reaches your pocket: the raw honey and jar itself, the label and time to fill and pack it, a share of your fixed overhead, and — if you sell through a distributor or shop — a cut for every link in that chain. This simulation renders that stack as a literal 3D tower of honey-coloured layers rising from your bench to your shelf price, so you can see exactly where the money goes.

How it works

• Bottom three layers — cost of goods, packaging & labour, and overhead, each sized to the dollar value you set.
• Profit layer — glows green when positive and turns red and flashes when your costs exceed what the channel pays you.
• Gold marker ring — the level at which you (the producer) stop receiving money; everything above it is channel margin.
• Grey cap — the distributor/retailer markup on top, only present in wholesale and retail channels; it vanishes when you sell direct.

Controls

• Shelf price — the final price a customer pays for one jar.
• Cost of goods — raw honey, jar, and lid cost per unit.
• Packaging & labour — filling, labelling, and hands-on time per jar.
• Overhead — a per-jar share of rent, insurance, equipment depreciation, and admin.
• Sales channel — direct-to-consumer keeps the full shelf price; wholesale assumes a roughly 50% keystone cut to a distributor; retail three-tier splits the price across both a distributor and a retailer.

Did you know?

A "keystone" markup — doubling the wholesale cost to set the retail price — is the traditional rule of thumb in specialty food retail. If your wholesale price doesn't already clear your cost of goods, packaging and overhead with room to spare, raising your shelf price is usually healthier than cutting corners on the jar.