Have you been watching the new Channel 8 baking competition, Crème De La Crème host by our famous actresses Fann Wong and Jeanette Aw?
Since the premiere on 28 April 2021, there were bursts of interest in Fann Wong’s various baked food recipes.
I am joining the bandwagon to see whether the home chef or anyone who bakes can make some profit from creating cakes and bread from Fann Wong’s recipe.
As such, I started to follow her Instagram and chose one of my kid's all-time favorite chocolate fudge cake recipes to research.
In the past week, I have been studying her recipe and doing online window shopping at various sites to compare prices and recommend where to get the lowest ingredient cost possible.
At the end of this blog, I will be giving a score from 1 to 5 stars on whether you should add the chocolate fudge cake to your menu as a home chef or start your home chef journey selling this.
Let's jump right in and debunk whether there is any room for profit for this delicious chocolate fudge cake made by Fann Wong.
Ingredient cost
The most important component to calculate the profitability of the food is to first identify the cost of the ingredients. In this blog, I am being very meticulous to the extent of adding the miscellaneous cost such as packaging, electricity, water, and gas.
The picture below shows the quantity and ingredient used to yield a 21.5cm x 11.5cm loft cake.
Let's look at the recipe in detail. These are ingredients we can get from Redman by Phoon Huat. I’m sure folks who bake often have heard of this name. Or you can also get these ingredients from your nearby NTUC Fairprice supermarket.
Disclaimer: I am not associated with any of the supermarkets, prices may change from time to time and there may be promotions too. Prices is for reference only and accurate at time of writing and suppliers may change their price anytime, therefore please do your own research.
The choice of where to get is also dependent on whether you are baking for yourself one time or you are buying the ingredients to bake for selling. For the former, you will want to get ingredients that are cheaper and for the latter, you will want to get ingredients that are cheaper per gram or ml.
One example is Baking soda, if you are baking one time, you would have chosen to buy from Fairprice and pay $1.15 vs $1.80 from Redman. But if you are selling, you would want a cheaper price per gram and Redman should be your choice at $0.003/g vs $0.0115/g a whopping 3.8x more from Fairprice.
As such, the one highlighted in green shows my recommended choice based on the cost per unit. The assumption is also based on you planning to bake this cake multiple times till you fully consume all the ingredients.
Since the purpose of this blog is to calculate ingredient cost to see whether you can profit from selling this cake, we will suggest cheaper ingredients price per gram or milliliter.
After comparison of the prices, here is the shopping list for you to pick up the ingredients from NTUC Fairprice and RedMan These are the products from NTUC Fairprice that are more cost-effective or only available here.
Butter. ($4.50)
Corn Flour. ($0.85)
Eggs. ($4.85)
Full Cream Milk. ($1.75)
Salt. ($0.35)
Vegetable Oil. ($4.80)
Vanilla Essence. ($6.40)
These are the products from RedMan that are more cost-effective or only available here.
Plain Flour. ($1.80)
Caster Sugar. ($2.55)
Cocoa Powder. ($4.00)
Vanilla Extract. ($4.90)
Baking Powder. ($1.50)
Baking Soda. ($1.80)
The total expenses to get all these ingredients is $40.05. The breakdown is as follows.
Next, we put the ingredients into the Hommyliciouz Food Cost Calculator. We are able to tabulate the total ingredient cost per cake as $6.38. If you would like to have a copy of this, you can fill in your details at end of this blog and it will be emailed to you.
Miscellaneous cost
a. Packaging cost
There are various packaging available. You can refer to our previous blog on choosing to package here. PART4: Food Packaging Guide For Home Chef
You can use a simple plain white box from RedMan.
b. Gas
The gas tariff is around $0.20 per kWh. Since this is a rough estimate, I am going to assume we need 1kWh and we will need to pay roughly $0.20.
c. Electric
Electric tariff goes up and down too and I am going to assume that we need to use an electric oven of 3000W and we need to bake the cake for 55mins. Electric tariff is around $0.20 per kWh too so cost of electric will be 55/60 * 3 * 0.20 = $0.55.
d. Water
The water tariff is around $1.50 for 1000 liters. Let's assume we need 20l of water to include washing as well. The estimated price will be $0.03.
Total Miscellaneous cost is $1.34
How much to sell?
Finally, you can put in the price you intend to sell and the Hommyliciouz Food calculator will calculate the breakdown for you. You can refer to our previous blog on how to price the food that you are going to sell here.
After doing some research on how much Cafes and Restaurants are selling Chocolate Fudge cake, the prices range is wide from $35.80 to $109 in various sizes.
Since the cake recipe from Fann Wong is for a slightly smaller cake, I am going to price it at a modest $25. The selling price is the final piece of information needed for the Food Cost Calculator. Here’s the result after I put in the selling price of $25.
After considering ingredient cost, miscellaneous cost, and platform fee, you can still make a net profit of $12.28 per cake or close to 50% profit.
Finally, based on 4 criteria that I look at i.e. profitability, difficulty, demand, and time, let's see what's the total score for Fann Wong’s Chocolate Fudge Cake.
Fann Wong’s chocolate fudge cake is definitely on the highly recommended list if you intend to bake this for your family and bake some extra to sell to neighbours. To me, this is a win-win. Neighbours can enjoy cheaper cakes and you will get to earn some profit or to subsidies the cost of your ingredients. If you like our work on cost, please like our blog and share with home chef friends you know and we will continue writing more and keep you updated. Also, like our Facebook Page to get updates on new food offered by our home chefs.
Thanks for reading as always. We welcome your input, suggestions, or comments below. Let me know if the considerations in this blog are beneficial for planning your home chef business and you would like to know more about a specific meal or dish that you are planning to sell.
If you plan to be a home chef or you have been selling this chocolate cake on your menu, we would like to invite you to join us as Hommyliciouz's home chef. You may click here to download the mobile application and register as a home chef.
You can contact us on WhatsApp for discussion. Whatever your strategy is, Hommyliciouz is on this journey with you and will help you market your food for success.
If you would like to have a copy of the Hommyliciouz Food Cost Calculator, let us know your details below and we will send you a copy by email. Also, let us know if you would like us to do costing for the food that you are selling or intend to sell.
This is the standard that we are using to grade the suitability of food sold by the home chef.
About Author
I grew up with my grandma and one of my favorite times when I was young was in the early morning. I could get out of the house with my grandma patronizing the wet market. She would buy fresh ingredients which she would cook for the day. Her love for her family is poured into the food she prepared daily and can be felt by every generation she cooked for. Now with my own kids, I hope they can grow up being able to enjoy healthy home cook food too. As much as I enjoy cooking for my family, I find it a difficult juggle between my 9 to 5 job and preparing meals for my family. At the same time, at the weekend, I could spend more time cooking and I wish I can share my specialty for other people to enjoy.
I knew that in this digital world that we lived in, there has to be a better way and that’s the motivation for me to start Hommyliciouz .
The objective behind Hommyliciouz is to create a connection among people within communities where the passionate chef could provide fresh, home cook meals that are healthy and affordable.
We truly hope that you can enjoy this platform sharing love through cooking.
CEO of Hommyliciouz
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