How to price croissants and pastries: butter, lamination time, batch size and waste

A butter croissant made in a 3 kg flour batch by hand costs about A$2.29 in Australia once ingredients, labour, a bag and overhead are in, and sells for about A$4.89 at a 45% margin after allowing for the 15% of a day's bake that usually goes unsold. Butter is two thirds of the ingredient bill, but ingredients are about a fifth of the cost: lamination, shaping and baking time are about two thirds. A cafe pays about 60% of your retail price, A$2.93, which works because wholesale carries no waste and no bag. Bake a single 1 kg batch by hand and the same croissant costs over A$3.50 before any waste, so batch size decides whether croissants pay at all.

What goes into one croissant

The worked batch per kilogram of flour: 1 kg flour, 250 ml milk, 250 ml water, 120 g sugar, 20 g salt, 12 g instant yeast, 80 g butter in the dough, 500 g butter for the lock-in and 2 eggs for wash. After trimming, that is about 26 croissants of 75 g raw.

• Butter. 580 g per kilogram of flour, about 22 g a croissant. Laminating butter (a higher-fat sheet butter that stays plastic when cold) usually costs more than supermarket butter; price from your invoice.
• Flour, milk, sugar, eggs, yeast and salt. Together about a third of the ingredient bill.
• Labour. Mixing, the butter lock-in, three folds with rests, sheeting, cutting, rolling each triangle, panning, egg wash, baking and packing. The folds are short, but you cannot leave them; count the time you are tied to the dough.
• Packaging. A paper bag at an example 0.10 for retail. Cafe orders go in a crate or box.
• Overhead. 12% of materials and labour, as in the cake pricing calculator. Lamination needs cold bench time and fridge space, and a sheeter if you have one, so this is the minimum.
• Waste. Croissants are at their best on the day. Whatever is left at close is a cost of the ones you sold.

Batch size is the biggest lever

Mixing, lock-in and folding take almost as long for three kilograms of flour as for one; shaping is the part that grows with the count. Example hands-on hours, Australian croissant, no waste, 45% margin:

Time your own batch once, from mixing to the last tray out. The pattern is the same everywhere: one small batch by hand cannot be sold at a normal cafe price. Make the batch as large as you can sell, freeze shaped croissants to bake off over two or three days, and treat a sheeter as a pricing decision, not only an equipment one.

Price the waste into the croissants you sell

If you bake 78 and sell 66, the 12 left over cost the same to make. Divide by your sell-through, not by the count you baked. The Australian croissant from the 3 kg batch:

Track sell-through by day of the week for a month before you set a price, and bake to the day: a Tuesday that sells 40 should not get the Saturday batch. Day-old croissants can become almond croissants (split, filled with frangipane and rebaked), which turns waste into a second product with its own price. For planning bakes to demand, see production planning and waste.

The worked croissant in five currencies

A 3 kg batch by hand, 78 croissants, 3.4 hands-on hours, 85% sell-through, 45% margin. The wholesale column is 60% of retail; wholesale carries no waste and swaps the bag for a crate share at an example 0.03.

Ingredient prices: US Bureau of Labor Statistics city averages for August 2026 (flour US$0.548 per lb, sugar US$1.024 per lb, butter US$4.021 per lb, eggs US$2.272 a dozen, whole milk US$4.229 a gallon); ONS shopping prices for August 2026 (self-raising flour £1.01 for 1.5 kg, butter £2.26 for 250 g, white sugar £1.15 a kg, free-range eggs £3.93 for 12, whole milk £1.84 for 2.272 litres); Statistics Canada table 18-10-0245-01 for July 2026 (flour C$5.36 for 2.5 kg, butter C$5.92 for 454 g, sugar C$2.64 for 2 kg, eggs C$4.95 a dozen, milk C$6.99 for 4 litres); Stats NZ selected price indexes for August 2026 (flour NZ$2.06 for 1.5 kg, butter NZ$7.70 for 500 g, sugar NZ$3.30 for 1.5 kg, eggs NZ$8.60 a dozen, milk NZ$5.09 for 2 litres). Australia has no current official average retail price series for these, so the A$ figures use example prices (flour A$1.60 a kg, butter A$12 a kg, sugar A$1.80 a kg, eggs 60c each, milk A$1.70 a litre). Yeast and salt are an example 0.40 a batch. Hourly rates are examples.

What the table says

Butter moves fast. Stats NZ's butter price fell from NZ$8.43 to NZ$7.70 for 500 g between July and August 2026, almost 9% in a month. Even so, doubling the butter price adds only 20 to 34 cents a croissant across these markets, against 78p to A$1.53 of labour. Recost when butter moves, but look at batch size and sell-through first.

The ONS tracks a supermarket croissant at 75p in August 2026. That is a factory product baked off from frozen, and it is not your price floor. Your customers are paying for a hand-laminated croissant; check your price against other bakeries, not the supermarket shelf.

Other laminated pastries

Cost each from the same dough, then add what is different:

• Pain au chocolat. Two chocolate batons per pastry, priced from your invoice, and slightly less shaping time than a rolled croissant.
• Almond croissants. Built on day-old croissants. Cost the croissant at zero only if it would otherwise be thrown away; add frangipane, flaked almonds and the rebake.
• Danish and filled pastries. Add the filling, the extra shaping time and any glaze or fruit placed after baking. Fruit that softens by afternoon raises waste, so price those at a lower sell-through.
• Savoury pastries. Ham and cheese, or spinach and feta, add costly fillings; cost them per piece and treat them as their own products.

Cafe wholesale

Cafes buy croissants at about 60% of your retail price; the full reasoning is in wholesale pricing, price lists and terms. At 50% of retail the worked croissant leaves you 10 to 12%, and at 70% about 36%. With a sheeter the 60% price leaves close to half the price as margin in every market, which is why most bakeries that supply cafes in volume have one.

• Fixed order by a cutoff, such as 2pm the day before, so you can laminate against a known number. Croissant dough needs a day or more, so a cafe cannot add a dozen on the morning.
• Daily or every second day. Croissants are a same-day product, which makes delivery a bigger share of the price than for bread or brownies; pair them with bread on the same run. What to charge for delivery shows how to cost a drop.
• Baked or frozen. Selling shaped, frozen croissants for the cafe to bake moves the bake, the morning delivery and the waste to the cafe. Price them below your baked wholesale price, and give clear thawing, proving and baking instructions.
• No returns of unsold pastries. The cafe orders what it can sell.

Costing and selling pastries in ibakepro

ibakepro, bakery management software for bakeries of every size, from a home kitchen to a pastry operation supplying cafes, costs each croissant from what you paid for butter and flour, and recosts every laminated product when the butter invoice changes. The croissant dough can be a costed component used in pain au chocolat and almond croissants. Sell to customers through your storefront, and on the Business plan give cafes their own price list, minimum quantities and invoice terms through wholesale ordering. See recipe costing.