How much to charge for fudge and peppermint bark

Candy is sold by weight, so the useful number is cost per pound. With the example prices below, a pound of peppermint bark costs $11.87 to make and a pound of chocolate chip fudge costs $9.37, both with 30 minutes of work at an example $15 an hour, a $1.25 box and 10% overhead. At a 40% margin that works out to about $19.79 and $15.61 a pound. This is cost arithmetic on two recipes. What your customers will pay is up to you and your table.

Peppermint bark, about 4 pounds

Sunset's peppermint bark is three ingredients: 2 pounds of bittersweet chocolate, 2 pounds of peppermint candy and 1 tablespoon of vegetable shortening. The recipe says it makes about 4 pounds and needs 4 to 6 hours at cool room temperature to set. The setting time is waiting, so only the 30 minutes of chopping, melting, spreading and breaking are counted as labor. That figure is my guess. The chocolate, candy and shortening prices are my own round numbers, marked with a star. A tablespoon of shortening is 12 g, from the King Arthur weight chart (46 g per quarter cup, divided by four and rounded).

Chocolate is 65.1% of the ingredient bill and the candy 34.7%, so bark is a chocolate-price business. If you buy chocolate in bulk, change that one row. Open the bark in the calculator: its yield is 4, so every "per item" figure there is per pound.

Chocolate chip fudge, about 2 pounds

For fudge I used the Easy 5 Minute Chocolate Chip Fudge from homemade-dessert-recipes.com, which says it makes about 2 pounds in a 9-inch square pan. The page gives cups, so I turned them into weights with the King Arthur chart: 1 2/3 cups of sugar is 330 g, 1 1/2 cups of chips is 255 g, 1 1/2 cups of marshmallows is 64 g (priced as minis) and 1/2 cup of chopped nuts is 57 g (priced as walnuts). The 30 minutes of work is my assumption. Sugar uses the September 2026 BLS average, and the starred rows are my own round prices.

The ingredients are only $3.52 a pound, which is less than half of bark. Labor is the bigger line: $3.75 a pound against $1.88 for bark, because the same 30 minutes is spread over 2 pounds instead of 4. Open the fudge in the calculator to change the minutes.

The two side by side, per pound

Quarter, half and full pound boxes

Shops list fudge by the quarter and half pound too (see the examples further down), so the table prices three sizes. A small box carries the same candy cost per pound plus a container whose cost is spread over fewer ounces, so its price per pound is higher. The boxes here cost $0.60, $0.90 and $1.25, which are my example prices. The rounded price goes up to the next 50 cents, and the last column shows the margin that leaves you. All of it is my arithmetic on the batch costs above.

When the batch comes out short

Both recipes say "about". Chocolate that sticks to the pan, edges you trim and samples you eat all come off the weight, and the cost of the batch stays the same. Each row below keeps the batch cost and changes only the pounds it makes, then prices a one-pound box.

Weigh a finished batch once and use that number as the yield.

Fudge prices shops list, as examples

These are four of the eight shop listings on thepricer.org's fudge page (updated August 7, 2026), the ones I picked. The page's full range is $15.30 to $29.90 a pound. Each is one shop's own price for its fudge, and shops pay rent and staff out of it. The per pound column is my arithmetic. That page lists no peppermint bark, so there is no bark row.

Next to those, the fudge above comes to $9.37 a pound in cost and $15.61 at a 40% margin. The comparison shows where a number sits, and your own cost sheet decides it.

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