Is this Saturday market worth the booth fee? Enter expected sales, booth cost, and travel; see gross, net, and break-even.
Net profit
27.4% ROI
$129.00
Total costs
$471.00
Fuel
$26.00
Labor
$200.00
COGS
$210.00
Effective hourly
Net ÷ hours, incl. base labor rate
$41.13
Break-even sales
Gross needed to zero out costs
$401.54
A booth fee alone rarely tells the full story — fuel, prep time, setup, and teardown are where many weekend markets quietly lose money. Include honest labor hours: if you wouldn’t drive two hours round-trip for free, you shouldn’t pretend that time is free here either.
If effective hourly lands below your target rate, the market isn’t working for you — try a better-fit market, higher price points, or a smaller product lineup.
total_costs = booth + fuel + labor + COGS
net_profit = gross − total_costs
break_even = (booth + fuel + labor) ÷ (1 − COGS%)
ROI = net_profit ÷ total_costs × 100
CSA Share Pricing
Set a fair, profitable CSA price — enter weeks, members, and per-share production cost; get the share price that covers overhead and margin.
Cost Per Serving
Break a recipe or product cost into per-serving and per-unit pricing — foundation for profitable menu pricing.
Cost-Plus Pricing
Set a retail price from your cost and target margin — with a sanity check against competitor pricing.
Enter expected gross sales for the day, the booth fee, round-trip distance and your vehicle MPG, hours of stall labor, your hourly rate, and the cost of goods sold for what you expect to move. The calculator subtracts every cash and time cost to give net profit, hourly rate after expenses, and a break-even gross — the sales you would need just to cover going. The break-even number is the most useful output: anything below that and you are paying to attend the market.
Farmers markets look profitable until you count fuel, the 5 AM packing labor, the cost of unsold product going home, and the booth fee. A $400 day at a $75 booth with 60 miles of driving and 10 hours of total labor is often a break-even or loss day — and the only way to know is to write the numbers down before signing up for the season. This calculator turns "I think Saturday is worth it" into a defensible answer.
Fuel cost uses your entered MPG and a current $/gal you supply — it is not pulled from a live feed, so update it for your region. Labor includes prep, drive, setup, sell, and breakdown — most growers under-count this by a factor of two. COGS is the wholesale cost of what sells, not what you bring; unsold product reused next week is not a loss yet. Tent, table, signage, and credit-card processor amortization are not included — bake them into your hourly rate or treat them as fixed overhead.