Floral pricing formula: recipe cost to quoted price
This is the long form of the calculation the calculator runs. Work through it once by hand and the tool stops being a black box, which matters the day a client asks how you got to the number.
The Florist Heaven desk / Chapter 2 of 5
Cost is what you paid
Throughout this chapter, cost means the wholesale price that actually left your account, freight included. It is not the list price, not the price you were quoted in January, and not the price on the standing order you have since renegotiated.
Freight belongs inside the stem price rather than beside it. A box that costs forty dollars to ship and holds a hundred usable stems has added forty cents to every stem in it, and a recipe costed without that is quietly forty cents per stem short. The same logic applies to the stems that do not make it: if a bunch arrives with two unusable stems, the bunch still cost you the price of the bunch. You paid for ten and you are designing with eight.
cost per usable stem = (bunch price + freight share) / usable stems
($18.00 + $4.00) / 8 usable of 10 = $2.75 per stem
Add the freight this bunch carried to the price of the bunch, then divide by the stems you can actually design with. The illustrative figures here are arithmetic, not a quote from any wholesaler.
Costing at list price and hoping freight comes out of the margin is the most common way a profitable looking quote turns out flat. Freight is a cost of the flower, not an overhead.
Write the recipe down first
A recipe is a list: every item, how many, and what each one costs you. It is the smallest artifact that makes a price repeatable, and until it exists there is nothing to multiply.
| Item | Stems | Cost each | Line cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Garden rose, standard | 24 | $3.10 | $74.40 |
| Ranunculus | 18 | $2.35 | $42.30 |
| Spray rose | 12 | $1.85 | $22.20 |
| Eucalyptus, seeded | 9 | $1.90 | $17.10 |
| Ribbon, wire, tape | 1 | $6.40 | $6.40 |
| Wholesale cost | $162.40 |
wholesale cost = sum of (quantity x cost each)
$74.40 + $42.30 + $22.20 + $17.10 + $6.40 = $162.40
Multiply each line out and add the lines together.
Apply the multiple, or work back from the margin
There are two ways to get from the cost to the price, and they are the same arithmetic entered from different ends. Use whichever matches how you think about the job.
price = wholesale cost x markup
$162.40 x 3.2 = $519.68
Multiply what you paid by your multiple. This is the direction to use when you already know your number and want the price fast.
price = wholesale cost / (1 - target margin)
$162.40 / (1 - 0.688) = $520.51
Divide what you paid by one minus the margin you want, expressed as a decimal. Use this direction when the margin is the thing you are protecting.
The two lines above land a few cents apart because 3.2 and 68.8 percent are not exactly the same number; 3.2 is a margin of 68.75 percent, rounded for display. That is worth seeing once, because it is the shape of every rounding difference you will meet in quoting.
Read the result before you send it
gross profit = price - cost
$519.68 - $162.40 = $357.28
What is left after the flowers, before anything else the job costs you.
gross margin = (price - cost) / price
$357.28 / $519.68 = 0.688, which is 68.8 percent
The share of the price you keep. Divide the profit by the price, not by the cost. Dividing by the cost gives you the markup instead, and the two are frequently confused.
Gross profit is not what you take home. Labor, delivery, the van, the cooler, insurance, and the consultation you did not charge for all come out of this figure. That is the subject of the profit margin chapter.
Where labor sits
Some florists carry labor inside the flower multiple. Others quote it as its own line. Both can work, and only one of them survives a change to the recipe.
The moment a client swaps roses for ranunculus, a multiple that was quietly covering four hours of processing is covering a different cost and a different number of hours, and nothing on the quote says so. If you keep labor inside the multiple, write down which hours it is meant to cover and check it again whenever the recipe changes.
labor = hourly rate x hours
$45.00 x 2.5 = $112.50
Your rate and your hours, both of which are yours to set. The calculator can add this to the flower price or leave it separate, because both are legitimate ways to quote.
Delivery, setup, and strike are their own costs again, and they scale with distance, venue access, and how late somebody has to come back. Folding them into a flower multiple hides them from you as much as from the client.
Turning the arithmetic into a quote
The client does not need your cost, your multiple, or your margin. They need to know what they are getting, what it costs, and what happens if something changes. How itemized to be is a judgment call: a fully itemized quote invites line by line negotiation, and a single number invites the question of what is in it.
- Name the pieces and the count, so the scope is unambiguous.
- Say whether the price covers delivery, setup, and strike, or whether those are separate.
- Say what happens if a flower is not available, before it happens.
- Keep your recipe attached to your copy, not theirs.
What a proposal has to communicate, and how it becomes the agreement everyone signs.
Read the proposal chapterQuestions this chapter answers
- What is the formula for floral pricing?
- Total the recipe at what you paid, freight included, then either multiply by your markup or divide by one minus your target margin. Price equals wholesale cost times markup; gross margin equals price minus cost, divided by price. Labor, delivery, setup, and strike are separate costs.
- How much does a florist charge for wedding flowers?
- There is no figure we can honestly publish, because it depends on the recipe, your wholesale costs, your market, and your hours. The chapter shows the arithmetic that turns your own costs into your own price.