How to price your tiffin meals (with a worked example)

Most new tiffin businesses set their price by looking at a competitor and charging a little less. It feels safe. It is how kitchens end up busy every day and broke every month. The right way is to price from your own costs, then check the result against the market — not the other way round.

Step 1: cost one meal properly

A meal costs you more than its ingredients. Work out four numbers, per meal:

1. Ingredients. Take a real week of your menu. Add up everything you bought to cook it, and divide by the number of meals it made. Guesses are always too low; a real week is not.
2. Packaging. Container, lid, label and bag — or, for reusable containers, the cost of washing, losses and replacements, spread per meal.
3. Delivery. Riders’ monthly pay and fuel, divided by the meals they deliver in a month.
4. Overheads. Kitchen staff, rent, gas, power, software and marketing for the month, divided by meals per month.

Add them together and you have the true cost of one delivered meal. Anything you charge above it is what pays you and funds growth.

Step 2: decide the margin you need

There is no universal right margin, but there is a test: at your expected volume, does the business pay you a fair wage and leave money over? If not, the price is too low, the costs are too high, or the volume is too small.

Many tiffin kitchens aim to keep ingredients at roughly a third to two-fifths of the price. If your ingredients are half the price or more, look hard at portion sizes, menu design and buying.

A worked example

These are the example figures our profit calculator starts with in rupees:

At a price of ₹120, with 2% payment fees (₹2.40 a meal), each meal leaves about ₹31.91 of profit — around ₹82,960 a month, a 26.6% margin. Each meal contributes ₹64.60 towards fixed costs, so break-even is about 51 meals a day.

Now try the levers. Drop the price to ₹110 and the monthly profit falls by ₹26,000 (minus a little in fees). Lose 20 meals a day and it falls by roughly ₹33,600. Price and volume matter; small changes to either move the result a lot.

Step 3: check against the market

Now look at competitors. If your cost-based price is well above theirs, ask why: are they smaller portions, lower-quality ingredients, or simply losing money? If you are well below, you may be leaving money on the table — customers often read a very low price as low quality.

Pricing subscriptions

Subscriptions change the maths in your favour: predictable volume, less waste, and money in advance. It is reasonable to reward that.

• A small discount for commitment — for example, for customers who take two or more meals a day, or who prepay a month.
• Never discount below cost. A subscription discount must still leave a margin at your worst-case volume.
• Price per meal, not per month. When customers can pause days, charging per delivered meal from a prepaid wallet is fairer and avoids arguments about refunds.

When to raise prices

Ingredient costs rise; your price should follow. Raise prices with notice, explain briefly why, and consider protecting your longest-standing subscribers for a month. Most loyal customers accept a fair increase from a kitchen they trust — far more readily than a drop in quality.

Summary

• Cost one meal fully: ingredients, packaging, delivery, overheads
• Add a margin that pays you and funds growth
• Know your break-even meals per day
• Reward subscriptions, but never below cost

Run your own numbers in the tiffin profit calculator, and read the full guide to starting a tiffin business.