How much to charge for an apple pie
A 9 inch double-crust apple pie from King Arthur's recipe has $8.63 of ingredients. Most of that is 3.25 pounds of apples. Add a pan and box, 55 minutes of work at an example $15 an hour and 10% overhead, and the pie costs $26.96. At a 40% margin the price is $44.93. Labor is 51% of that cost, a bigger share of the cost than the apples.
What one pie costs
King Arthur's apple pie makes one 9 inch pie with 45 minutes of hands-on time and about an hour in the oven. I left out the optional boiled cider, egg wash and sparkling sugar and kept the optional vanilla, and added 10 minutes for finishing and boxing, which is my pick. The filling needs 8 cups of peeled, sliced apples, which the recipe says comes from about 3.25 pounds of whole apples. The apple row is priced by that whole weight, so the peel and core are paid for. Flour, sugar and eggs use the September 2026 U.S. averages from the BLS, and butter uses its own BLS series for the same month. The apples use the Granny Smith price in the USDA Economic Research Service chart (October 2024, the newest figure I found). Everything else carries a star: my placeholder price.
| Ingredient | Used | Package | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour (crust) | 300 | $0.55 / 1 | $0.36 |
| Table salt (crust) | 0.75 | $1.29 / 26 * | $0.01 |
| Vegetable shortening | 60 | $5.49 / 48 * | $0.24 |
| Butter (crust) | 113 | $3.96 / 1 | $0.99 |
| Granny Smith apples (3 1/4 lb whole) | 3.25 | $1.48 / 1 | $4.81 |
| Bottled lemon juice | 2 | $3.29 / 15 * | $0.22 |
| Granulated sugar | 149 | $1.02 / 1 | $0.33 |
| All-purpose flour (filling) | 14 | $0.55 / 1 | $0.02 |
| Cornstarch | 14 | $2.29 / 16 * | $0.07 |
| Table salt (filling) | 0.5 | $1.29 / 26 * | $0.01 |
| Ground cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice | 1.5 | $3.99 / 18 * | $0.33 |
| Vanilla extract | 2 | $5.99 / 2 * | $1.00 |
| Butter (dotted on the filling) | 28 | $3.96 / 1 | $0.24 |
| Ingredients for the batch | $8.63 | ||
Apples are 55.7% of the ingredient bill. Packaging is $2.13, a foil pan and a window box, the same placeholders as on the pumpkin pie page. Open this pie in the calculator to change the apple price, the crust or your hourly rate.
Apples by the pound
The recipe's 904 grams of sliced apple from 3.25 pounds of whole fruit means about 61% of what you buy ends up in the pie. A cheaper apple saves less than it seems, and the table shows how little. Only the apple row changes.
| Apples per pound | Apples per pie | Pie cost | Price at 40% |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0.99 | $3.22 | $25.21 | $42.01 |
| $1.48 | $4.81 | $26.96 | $44.93 |
| $2.00 | $6.50 | $28.82 | $48.03 |
$0.99 and $2.00 are my own round numbers around the USDA figure.
The USDA's chart puts a homemade apple pie at about $8.80 in ingredients for Thanksgiving 2024. This page's list comes to $8.63 on this page's prices for a different shopping list, so the two are close but not the same basket. Their ice cream add-on is $0.39 a scoop; at a 40% margin that is $0.65, if you sell pie à la mode by the slice.
Lattice or a plain top
The recipe's alternative to a vented top crust is a woven lattice. It uses the same dough, so the ingredients do not change. The time does. I added 15 minutes for cutting strips and weaving, a guess you should replace with your own stopwatch. Each cell is the price at a 40% margin.
| Top crust | Minutes | At $12 an hour | At $15 an hour | At $20 an hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Double crust, vented | 55 | $39.89 | $44.93 | $53.34 |
| Lattice top | 70 | $45.39 | $51.81 | $62.50 |
Going from $12 to $20 an hour moves a plain pie from $39.89 to $53.34. The lattice at $15 costs $6.88 more than the plain top. If customers rarely notice the difference, offer it as a labeled upgrade instead of building it into every pie.
Next to the pumpkin pie
If you sell both at Thanksgiving, see the pumpkin pie page for per-slice prices and a 30-pie batch. Fitting pies and a turkey into one oven on the day is on the pies and turkey in one oven page. Other pages with a rolled dough and a fixed pan: cinnamon rolls and brownies. Markup and margin are different numbers; markup vs margin for bakers has the table. Cottage food rules on which pies you may sell differ by state, so check yours.