What is a Mark-up Schedule?
The Mark-up Schedule is invaluable when you are planning menus or trying to set prices or marketing strategies. The schedule shows what is selling and how much each item contributes to the canteen’s bottom line.
You can use it to:
1. Make sure the mark-ups on your food and drink correspond to your canteen policy (eg is there a larger mark-up on less healthy items?).
2. Identify items you need to promote more effectively. For example, a school thought it was doing well by selling 1256 bottles of flavoured milk over a term. However, the school had around 1200 students, which meant it had only sold around 1 bottle per head over the term. By completing the Mark-up Schedule the canteen could then decide to promote the flavoured milk more effectively, reduce the cost of the flavoured milk or delete it from their menu.
A Mark-up Schedule should be done at least once per year so that your menu prices can be worked out and adjusted if needed.
On the Mark-up Schedule you list the canteen’s range of food and drink together with:
1. The cost price and selling price of each item, so that you know the mark-up the canteen should make on each sale
2. How many of each item you sold during the school term
3. The number of students in your school
Some terms used in a Mark-up Schedule (See Mark-up Schedule templates attached):
1. Item – write down the items the canteen sells. The Mark-up Schedule can still be a useful tool if you only list the items the canteen sells the most of (eg pies, pizzas, salad rolls, milks, etc) but it is much better to list all items. Once this is recorded on the computer it is easy to change an item if needed.
2. Cost price - write down the cost price of each item. For pre-prepared foods and drinks you can get this from the suppliers invoices or your Cost of Goods Expenditure Ledger. For food and drink prepared in the canteen you need to calculate the cost price per serve eg. If you get 6 slices from one tomato and use 3 on a sandwich, work out the cost price of the tomato filling used on a salad sandwich. Remember to add in the price of all the ingredients as well as containers, wrapping, etc.
3. Selling price – write down the price you sold each item for.
4. Percentage mark-up - write down the percentage mark-up on each item. This is: (Selling price – Total cost price) divided by the Total cost price.
5. Gross profit and expected average mark-up – see calculations on template
Download a Mark-up Schedule template here
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