Wayne Boatwright
Of course I wouldn't sell them for $.45 each but I can't imagine almost a 300% markup.
If you were making them commercially, not only would you have to consider ingredients and labor, you'd need to cover the cost of working in a commercial kitchen, which is generally a health code requirement. Here, if I wanted to, I could rent one for $25 per hour. I don't know how many hours your "all day" dough would really take, but if it's 8 hours, that's $200 added to the cost. How many Danish could you make and sell in a day, and how many would you end up throwing away after they got stale?
If it's being shipped, you're also paying for the packaging materials and the shipping costs. A commercial baker is probably going to have some nicely printed custom boxes or labels, so there's another cost.
Then add on all the extra costs that no one ever sees -- stupid stuff like yellow pages ads, phone service, labor (if you're not doing all the work yourself) all the taxes and insurance and things like that. And the person running the business is going to want to make a living from the business.
By the time you're done, there's more cost in everything besides ingredients. So, ingredients-wise, the Danish aren't worth what you pay. If it's a great secret recipe, or the baker has skills you don't have, then it might be worth paying for.
Donna
