How much do you charge?

Don't forget the cost of all the other variables: rubs, sauces, fuel, the cooker itself, your time...

Not enough to make it worth my while :thumb: guess it depends if you want to roll the dice with the health department/legal liability. Someone was gonna say it, so I'll take my turn this time.

You have to ask yourself how much your time is worth. $25 over the cost of the meat is losing money when you account for rub, wood, and charcoal. Then throw in losing 12-18 hours of my life to feed someone else...

Put it this way. The going rate for restaurants in my area is about $25 per pound of brisket. A 15lb brisket will yield about 8 lbs of meat, so $200 for that brisket. Ribs we charge $25 a rack (also the going rate in my area), and a whole chicken is in the $20 range. We haven't done turkeys, but they are in the $80-$100 range depending on where you go.

I've had this question asked to me a lot recently as we are just getting our business off the ground. Personally, I'd rather be honest in the beginning than get taken advantage of down the road when they want to keep paying you $75 for that brisket and you lose a whole Saturday to be in the negative.

Don't be afraid to be selfish and don't short change yourself. Good BBQ is expensive to make and you need to make your friends and family aware of that early on. With that said, obviously there are some that are closer to me than others, so I've done pig roasts for cost or cooked for cost. Especially if I'm there to enjoy it as well and partake in the festivities. I don't mind doing that at all. But, now that our business is out there we are starting to get those people that follow our social media and start inquiring. That's work now, not a hobby.

I'm not sure what I would charge if it did it for a living. I do many things for family and friends and I only ask that they pay for the meat and foil containers. I still love doing it enough that I don't charge for the time, rub, or wood. But again I only do it for family and close friends who do me favors as well.

It has been my experience when I attempted to sell my leftover competition practice meats to my friends/co-works that they expected to pay less than cost. They kept on stating that they could go to the local BBQ restaurant and get it cheaper. The argument that the restaurant's quality is garage compared to what I made did not seem to work.

After attempting to sell my practice runs but no one wanting to pay what it was worth I decided to just eat it myself.

WilliamKY said:

I'm not sure what I would charge if it did it for a living. I do many things for family and friends and I only ask that they pay for the meat and foil containers. I still love doing it enough that I don't charge for the time, rub, or wood. But again I only do it for family and close friends who do me favors as well.

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This is basically what I do now. I use the leftovers as a trading item which seems to work better than attempting to sell it.

Depends on who it's for. Is this a friends and family question or "selling it on the side" question?

WilliamKY said:

I'm not sure what I would charge if it did it for a living. I do many things for family and friends and I only ask that they pay for the meat and foil containers. I still love doing it enough that I don't charge for the time, rub, or wood. But again I only do it for family and close friends who do me favors as well.

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This is what I do. Sometimes, they give me extra meat as thanks. If you want to charge, the "Advice for new catering" thread has some good advice. Don't pay attention to my post, read the ones by people who actually do it and know what they are talking about. I don't and shouldn't have posted there.

3X cost of meat per pound break even
5X cost of meat per pound make a profit

I honestly don’t know. I do know most Q joints have their retail customer price per pound posted on boards- usually in chalk

https://www.ribcrib.com/menu/packs-pounds/

Lately I’ve seen brisket 16-18$# moist or lean
Ribs 20-25 per rack
1/2# Pulled Pork 7-8$
Whole briskets $100+
Beef Ribs 25$ each

At these prices you get access to white bread- pickles onions cherry peppers sauce and perhaps a free beer.

Think of every bbq Joint you know then search for them on Instagram quite a few have their prices posted

I don’t and won’t cook for money. I’m really good at saying no.
(I’m doing this from memory may be off a few centavos)

You could take a look at these guys' per pound prices. They are very good. But then again it's New Jersey, so there's an uplift there. And I'm sure they have their health board clearances and insurance, as well as property maintenance.

http://www.tstbbq.com/menu

Immediate family Id just cover meat costs and beer.

Im not in the catering business, so outside of that I would charge so much that they realize it would be cheaper and easier to just go stand in line at Corkscrew. I would not mind on occassion or as a favor but would not want people to get the mindset that I will be doing it often and for cheap because I have no overhead.

I get the idea of wanting to recoup some of the money spent on BBQ. Perhaps a donation jar would help a little or a cover charge. I don't think it will be anywhere close to the real cost because people outside of the bbq world just don't take the time to add up all the costs - just like I don't when I go to a restaurant, a large party, etc. Nor do I really want them to; I'd rather focus on having a good time. Smoking is an expensive hobby but having people over allows me to cook more.

rus_bro said:

I know iv read a similar thread to this in the past and go the same thoughts...Not planning on starting any real catering, just thinking of a few extra cooks for a little cash.

All very very good points made and im going to have to do some more deeeeep thinking..

checking out the local bbq joints for full meat prices and its interesting.

rb

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For a real straight pricing answer (involving no comments about the legality of this) just look up pricing at your local restaurants if you are thinking about doing this on the side for Non-family/friends. It's just that easy.

But of course if you are thinking of "on the side" think of the "potential legal consequences" if you make someone sick to potentially make a few extra hundred bucks every so often :becky:.

I've turned down every wedding/birthday/funeral/graduation/retirement etc catering gig people have asked me to do if they are not immediate family/friends. People know I worked at a bbq restaurant so I get it a lot.

eap0510 said:

It has been my experience when I attempted to sell my leftover competition practice meats to my friends/co-works that they expected to pay less than cost. They kept on stating that they could go to the local BBQ restaurant and get it cheaper. The argument that the restaurant's quality is garage compared to what I made did not seem to work.

After attempting to sell my practice runs but no one wanting to pay what it was worth I decided to just eat it myself.

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You need better friends

Since I'm cooking almost everyday already, my friends only pay the raw meat price plus $10-15 to cover rub and injection. Everybody else pays 3x raw meat prices if they just want a whole brisket and that seems to work out pretty well.

rus_bro said:

I know iv read a similar thread to this in the past and go the same thoughts...Not planning on starting any real catering, just thinking of a few extra cooks for a little cash.

All very very good points made and im going to have to do some more deeeeep thinking..

checking out the local bbq joints for full meat prices and its interesting.

rb

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Reveille is charging $100 for a cooked 5-8 pound brisket.

Economy of Scale...

I know of a guy that has a pretty large offset (250 gal). He smokes a lot of meat at once and then vacuum seals the entire piece of meet and freezes them. He then sells them to people with the instructions on how to thaw and re-heat. Not what I would want but someone must be buying them as he cooks several times a month.