honey price update

[thorn]

What do they charge?

I don't know. They're both on my bee buddy's side of town, so I don't shop there. Presumably enough to turn a profit.

 

[ericbeaumont]

enough to turn a profit.

Useful to know what margin they add - 40%? Do they shift a lot of your stock?

 

[thorn]

Useful to know what margin they add - 40%? Do they shift a lot of your stock?

Size for size they both shift quite a bit. I'm happy with what they pay me. What they sell for is for them to decide.

 

[ericbeaumont]

What they sell for is for them to decide.

For sure, but useful to know the retail margin.

 

[Hedgerow Honey]

There's a guy local to us selling a pound for a fiver, plus plenty selling 12 oz for the same, utter madness IMHO and definitely we would not survive at that price point.

 

[Jules59]

My local commercial beekeeper sells all his honeys at £12/lb on-line + delivery (or collect from his family's local garden centre)

 

[SWEET]

There's a guy local to us selling a pound for a fiver, plus plenty selling 12 oz for the same, utter madness IMHO and definitely we would not survive at that price point.

Local bee farmer to me is selling to ALL the outlets around here for £4.50 12oz jar which seems pointless, take off the jar/label/fuel/work costs and it's below bulk rates. His outlets are selling at £5.95 12oz so cheaper than the local Facebook dodgy looking honey.

I'm selling to my outlets for more than his retail store prices and they sell for upwards of £10 jar.

Busy fool and all that.

 

[fian]

I do wonder how many people are selling at below the cost of production, as it were. I've never really worked it out myself, so at the weekend I began writing a list of every possible outlay involved this year and after I finish extracting I'll work out what the cost to me per pound is.

James

What is the expected production cost for a non-professional beekeeper, in the sense that it is only a non-profit activity and in which his life does not depend on the money generated to sustain himself?

 

[WoodenBeam]

Maybe a busy fool in your opinion but I bet he’s shifting volume.
Also his outlets shifting it at that price will be doing a reasonable volume - doubt it’s crystallising on the shelf.
Customers getting a good deal - everyone’s a winner in that little supply chain.
Maybe a different business model to yours but if it works for him/her and gets people eating / enjoying Honey then I’m certainly not against that.
Consumers can then branch out & buy the odd jar or two that catch their eye from smaller producers who maybe producing something a little more artisan that they feel is more valuable.

 

[SWEET]

Maybe a busy fool in your opinion but I bet he’s shifting volume.

Not opinion but business, if you sell at near bulk rates then simply sell the lot at bulk and save a load of work, simple/makes sense.
At those prices they need to shift large volume to make a basic living, lifting to £6 b2b the outlets will still sell for a higher margin no problem and save a load of work. Consumers don't get the option if the outlets will only pay low prices and never stock the smaller producers.

As the pricing is still the same as years ago and everything has gone up by 40% ish it also puts a business at real risk of failure with little if anything left for investment with such slim margins.

Customers are still getting a good deal @£8 a jar, honey is a valuable product and should be treated as such (the price of a couple of coffee's...)

Supermarkets push cheap product.

PS. I used to run a biz selling cheap stuff to 1000's customers a day, big numbers razor-thin margin, not much fun.

 

[Curly green finger's]

Thnks for this, really useful!

They will be buying then applying their markup, but i have no idea on margins they would expect or hope to take!

Their customers from their cookery school are also unlikely to be 'direct locals' who would buy from me direct.. atleast initially!

I sell 8 oz jar’s wholesale @£4.75
Chunk honey £6
Cut comb 150g - 200g £10
Your £5 per wholesale sounds good

 

[Murox]

Isell to a couple of local shops at £5 for 227g, they sell at £7.50 . Cut comb min weight 227g I sel at £6 one shop sells that for £10. It all goes like hot cakes here. Local seems to be the big usp.

 

[WoodenBeam]

Not opinion but business, if you sell at near bulk rates then simply sell the lot at bulk and save a load of work, simple/makes sense.
At those prices they need to shift large volume to make a basic living, lifting to £6 b2b the outlets will still sell for a higher margin no problem and save a load of work. Consumers don't get the option if the outlets will only pay low prices and never stock the smaller producers.

As the pricing is still the same as years ago and everything has gone up by 40% ish it also puts a business at real risk of failure with little if anything left for investment with such slim margins.

Customers are still getting a good deal @£8 a jar, honey is a valuable product and should be treated as such (the price of a couple of coffee's...)

Supermarkets push cheap product.

PS. I used to run a biz selling cheap stuff to 1000's customers a day, big numbers razor-thin margin, not much fun.

Sell near bulk rates……..£3/lb bucket price there or there abouts, less than that in a barrel. £4.50/12oz goes to £6/lb.

Consumers don’t get the option…….yeah they do they buy direct from producer. Push prices too much and you force the majority of buyers down the route of the local supermarket - what do we import, something in the region of 60% consumed or is it more?

Let’s be honest a lot of smaller producers end up buying in buckets to keep their local outlet stocked - no wonder prices need to reflect this.

As for investment with slim margins sorry are you expecting a pay back after year one? Maybe people should source better pricing or repay their investment over a longer period, is it any wonder why people look to China these days for processing lines. What’s the saying - how do you make a small fortune beekeeping? Start with a big one

As for your coffee comment I’m sure you can guess I’m more of a Kenko man - 125 cups supposedly from ma £5 jar of caffeine
Good dollop of Honey makes it very palatable though.

 

[SWEET]

£4lb bucket rate here, £3.50 for OSR no problem (if you wanted to process that carp). Your £4.50/12oz/£6 is off as you're not accounting for the jar/label/pack/fuel (kit)/time etc etc.. so it's actually less than bulk buckets which was my original point (if you look at the numbers).

I white label a lot of mine, £4lb and sold into various markets for a huge return, they are not producers.

If the producers are locked out due to cheap pricing (like supermarkets/outlets stocked with cheap product) then options are limited and cost far more. I'd rather see a broad range of product in stores/supermarkets and let the customer decide on quality/taste rather than driven by price before it even gets to the shelf. If you do manage to get into an outlet selling cheap, sell yours for more and you'll find customers purchase the more expensive option (it's a luxury after all).

Business growth, you're not going to be building anything with slim margins let alone repay large investment in kit/set-up. It'll stay as a one person set-up at best. You'll still need to sell at a decent price well into double figure tons (as a honey producer) even at bulk rates.

Nothing wrong with China for kit, if you pay the money it rivals the best in the world these days (maybe not the coffee and honey )

Thankfully i'm not into bee farming for the honey side, but the bees produce loads and I need to sell it (but not for free).

 

[Sutty]

I've just put my price up for my local retailers to £6.50 per 340g hex jar, one sells at £8 (may have put it up as i did), the other at £10! (Though they sell a lot less).
Plenty of demand at that price - the bigger seller says they will take as much as I've got. I'd quite like them to put up the price to slow sales so my supply remains continuous!

 

[fian]

£4lb bucket rate here, £3.50 for OSR no problem (if you wanted to process that carp). Your £4.50/12oz/£6 is off as you're not accounting for the jar/label/pack/fuel (kit)/time etc etc.. so it's actually less than bulk buckets which was my original point (if you look at the numbers).

Unless I'm wrong with the conversions of pounds, ounces and kilos. A pound is 16 ounces and a kilo is approximately 35 ounces.
Given that for a 4 pound/96 ounce or 2.75 kilo bucket you get paid £3.50 while for 12 ounces in a jar with a label you get an income of £4.5. That's a 10-fold difference, without taking into account taste or quality preferences.
To give an example, in Galicia you can get €4/Kg wholesale and the price, while the 1kg jar ranges between €7-14.

 

[SWEET]

Yeah wrong -

Bucket £4/lb (16oz)
Jar @ £4.50 (12oz) - £6/lb

Jar b2b minus - Jar/Label/Delivery/Fuel/Packing/Kit to process (a lot at scale(jar washer/bottle machine/Label machine/filtering etc etc etc) and a food spec building (rent?) and your time/wage etc.

At a more realistic £6 a jar, that gives you £8/lb - still slim but at volume, viable (because running lots of hives is expensive)

 

[fian]

Yeah wrong -

Bucket £4/lb (16oz)
Jar @ £4.50 (12oz) - £6/lb

Jar b2b minus - Jar/Label/Delivery/Fuel/Packing/Kit to process (a lot at scale(jar washer/bottle machine/Label machine/filtering etc etc etc) and a food spec building and your time/wage etc.

At a more realistic £6 a jar, that gives you £8/lb - still slim but at volume, viable (because running lots of hives is expensive)

It was a translator's error between pounds peso and pounds currency.
Now that you wrote it differently. It seems to me that the 1.5 times value is really adjusted for retail. In Galicia the ratio is better (there is much more margin, which allows for more disparate approaches) although the price for honey is lower.