🍯 Honey Shop Margins

About this simulation

Jars of honey travel along a fulfilment line — filled, labelled, boxed and shipped — while a live 3D bar chart breaks down exactly where each pound of the retail price goes: production, packaging, the sales channel's fee, courier shipping, and what is left as profit.

How it works

• Production cost is held roughly fixed (jar, lid, label, the honey itself and a share of extraction costs).
• Packaging cost rises in summer, when leak-proof seals and insulated boxes reduce the risk of honey weeping or jars cracking in transit, and falls slightly at larger batch sizes thanks to bulk box/label pricing.
• Platform fee is the cut taken by the sales channel — a farmers' market or local shop takes a flat pitch fee equivalent, a marketplace like Etsy or Amazon Handmade takes a percentage of the sale plus listing costs, and a producer's own website only pays card-processing fees.
• Shipping cost scales with distance and jumps further for summer shipments, which need faster or insulated courier services to stop honey overheating in transit.
• Profit is whatever remains of the retail price after all four costs are subtracted — shown as a green bar, or a red warning if the jar is being sold at a loss.

Controls

• Retail price / jar — the shelf or listing price charged to the customer.
• Sales channel — where the jar is sold, which sets the platform fee.
• Shipping distance — how far the courier has to travel to the customer.
• Order batch size — how many jars are packed in this run, changing packaging economies of scale and the number of jars on the line.
• Season — summer heat raises packaging and shipping costs to keep honey food-safe in transit.

Did you know?

In the UK, anyone selling honey — even a few jars from a garden hive — must register as a food business with their local authority at least 28 days before trading, and correctly labelled jars must state a "best before" date, net weight and the producer's address.