New Feature: Track Fixed Expenses and Find Out How Much You Need to Sell to Make a Profit
Published on 09/12/2026 at 18:41:56.
Food entrepreneur using PocketChef to analyse fixed expenses, pricing and sales targets.

Find out how much your products need to sell to cover your business expenses and start generating profit.

Do you know how much your food business needs to sell every month just to pay its bills?

We're not talking about the ingredients that go into your recipes.

We're talking about rent, electricity, water, phone bills, internet and other recurring expenses that continue even when you don't produce or sell anything.

These costs are part of running virtually any food business, but they are often completely separated from product pricing.

And that can create a serious problem.

You may calculate the ingredient cost of a recipe correctly, add your desired profit margin and still discover at the end of the month that your sales weren't enough to cover all of your business expenses.

That's why PocketChef is introducing a new Fixed Expenses feature.

You can now tell PocketChef how much your business spends each month on fixed expenses and get a much more complete picture of how your pricing, sales volume and profitability are connected.

🏠 Your Rent Doesn't Disappear When Sales Slow Down

Imagine that you run a small bakery.

Even during a month when you sell fewer cakes, some of your expenses continue as usual.

Your rent still has to be paid.

The electricity bill still arrives.

Your internet and phone service still have monthly costs.

Other recurring business expenses may also need to be paid.

These expenses don't directly increase every time you sell another cake, cookie box or dessert.

That's why they are considered fixed expenses.

And understanding them is essential if you want to know how profitable your business really is.

📊 What Are Fixed Expenses?

Fixed expenses are recurring business costs that remain relatively stable over a given period, regardless of how many products you produce or sell.

Common examples for food businesses include:

These costs are different from expenses that are directly tied to producing or selling a particular product.

If you make more cakes, for example, you will normally use more ingredients.

Your monthly rent, however, may remain the same.

Understanding this difference is an important part of understanding your business finances.

⚙️ Add Your Fixed Expenses to PocketChef

The new feature is available in your Profile, under the Costs section.

There, you can enter the recurring fixed expenses that apply to your business.

For example, you might enter:

In this example, the business has $2,800 in monthly fixed expenses.

Those expenses have to be covered regardless of how many products the business sells during the month.

By giving PocketChef this information, the app gains a much more complete picture of the financial structure of your business.

🎯 How Much Does Each Recipe Need to Contribute to Your Fixed Expenses?

This is one of the most useful insights provided by the new feature.

Once you know your fixed expenses, you can start understanding how much each product needs to contribute to keeping your business running.

Imagine, for example, that your bakery has $3,000 in monthly fixed expenses.

If you sell several different products, it would not necessarily make sense to divide that amount equally among every recipe.

A cake may represent a much larger share of your sales than a cookie box.

That's why the contribution of each product can be analysed based on how much of each product you sell.

PocketChef uses your sales information to provide a more detailed view of how your fixed expenses can be distributed across your recipes.

This helps you understand what portion of your fixed expenses is associated with each product.

🧮 Why Does This Change the Way You Price Your Products?

Consider two products:

The ingredient cost of each product is only part of the story.

For your business to be sustainable, your sales need to generate enough money to cover not only ingredients, but also the expenses required to keep the business operating.

Once fixed expenses become part of the analysis, the question changes from:

"How much does it cost me to make this product?"

to:

"How much does this product need to contribute so my business can cover its expenses and generate profit?"

That's a major difference.

📈 Find Out Your Break-Even Point

One of the most important questions for any business owner is:

"How many products do I need to sell before I start making money?"

This question is directly connected to the concept of the break-even point.

In simple terms, the break-even point is the level of sales at which the revenue generated is enough to cover the costs and expenses considered in the business operation.

Once you reach that point, additional sales can begin contributing to profit, after considering the other costs associated with those sales.

PocketChef uses the information you provide to help you understand how many products you need to sell to cover your fixed expenses and begin generating profit.

That turns an abstract financial concept into a much more concrete sales target.

🎯 Turn Your Fixed Expenses Into a Sales Target

Imagine that your business has $4,000 in monthly fixed expenses.

Instead of simply looking at that number and thinking, "That's a lot," you can ask a much more useful question:

"How many products do I need to sell to generate that $4,000?"

If your business sells several different products, the analysis becomes even more useful.

You can think about different sales combinations:

This turns fixed expenses from simply being bills you have to pay into an important part of your business planning.

🔮 Simulate Different Sales Scenarios Before Making Decisions

Another important part of the new feature is the ability to simulate a scenario using a specific number of sales.

This allows you to explore questions that come up in everyday business management.

For example:

Instead of waiting until the end of the month to discover the result, you can use simulations to explore different possibilities in advance.

📅 Plan Your Month Before It Starts

Imagine starting a new month knowing what your sales target needs to be.

You know how much you need to sell to cover your fixed expenses.

You know which products you sell.

You know the cost of your recipes.

And you can simulate different sales scenarios.

This can completely change the way you manage your business.

Instead of simply waiting to see how much you sold, you can work with a financial target based on your actual business costs.

💡 What If You Sell Less Than Expected?

This is another question every business owner should consider.

If fixed expenses remain relatively stable, a decline in sales can have a significant impact on your bottom line.

Imagine a business that normally sells 200 units per month and has a certain fixed-cost structure.

If it sells only 100 units in a particular month, its fixed expenses do not necessarily fall by half.

That's why looking only at revenue can hide an important problem.

You need to understand the relationship between sales volume, costs, expenses and profit.

That's exactly the perspective PocketChef aims to provide by incorporating fixed expenses into its pricing and financial analysis.

🚀 PocketChef Keeps Getting Smarter

The Fixed Expenses feature is another step in PocketChef's evolution toward providing a more complete management solution for food businesses.

The app already helps you calculate recipe costs, set prices, manage orders, track cash flow, analyse business statistics, use a digital menu and much more.

Now, by adding fixed expenses to the equation, PocketChef can help you understand your business finances from an even broader perspective.

It's not just about knowing how much a recipe costs.

It's about understanding how much it costs to keep your business running and how much you need to sell for the business to become truly profitable.

🔄 Fixed Expenses and Variable Selling Expenses: Two Parts of the Same Picture

To understand the profitability of a product properly, it is important to distinguish between fixed expenses and variable selling expenses.

Fixed expenses are recurring costs that remain relatively stable, such as rent, internet, phone service and other monthly commitments.

Variable selling expenses, on the other hand, are connected to your sales. Sales taxes, delivery fees, payment processing fees, commissions and other selling-related costs are examples.

Both affect your bottom line, but they affect your business in different ways.

That is why the more complete your cost information is, the more detailed your pricing analysis can become.

PocketChef brings these different pieces together so you can build a much clearer picture of the financial reality behind your products.

💰 Your Recipe Cost Is Only the Beginning

Imagine that you make a cake that costs $40 in ingredients.

You might think:

"If I sell it for $80, I've made $40."

But that calculation doesn't necessarily account for everything involved in running your business.

If your business has rent, utilities, phone service and other monthly expenses, part of the money generated by your sales needs to cover those costs.

If you also pay sales-related fees, commissions or other variable expenses, those need to be considered as well.

That's why knowing the ingredient cost alone isn't enough to understand the profitability of a product.

You need to look at the entire business.

🏠 How Much of Your Rent Is Behind Each Product?

This can be a surprisingly difficult question to answer when you manage your finances manually.

Imagine that your bakery pays $2,000 in rent every month.

You sell cakes, cupcakes and cookies.

How much of that $2,000 should be associated with each product?

The answer doesn't necessarily mean dividing the expense equally among every product.

If cakes represent a larger share of your sales, they can represent a larger contribution toward covering your fixed expenses.

PocketChef uses the sales information available for your products to provide a more detailed view of how fixed expenses can be distributed across your recipes.

This helps you understand what portion of your fixed expenses is associated with each product.

📦 What Happens If You Sell 100 Units?

The ability to simulate a specific number of sales gives you another useful perspective on your business.

Imagine asking:

"What if I sell 100 units of this product next month?"

PocketChef lets you simulate a scenario using a specific sales volume.

This can help you understand how that sales volume may affect your financial results.

You can use this information to plan marketing campaigns, establish sales targets or simply understand the revenue-generating potential of your products.

🎯 Turn Your Break-Even Point Into a Sales Goal

The break-even point can sound like a complicated accounting concept when it appears only in a spreadsheet.

In practical terms, the question is much simpler:

"How much do I need to sell to cover my business expenses?"

That's an extremely useful number for any business owner.

Imagine knowing exactly how much you need to sell every month before your business begins generating a profit.

That number can become a concrete sales target.

You can monitor your sales and understand whether you are getting closer to the level needed to cover your expenses.

PocketChef uses the information you provide to help make this analysis easier to understand.

📈 Selling More Can Change Your Bottom Line

When a business has fixed expenses, increasing sales volume can have an important impact on profitability.

That's because some expenses need to be paid regardless of how many products you make or sell.

Once those expenses are covered, additional sales can contribute differently to your bottom line, depending on the costs and variable selling expenses associated with those sales.

That's why understanding your break-even point and simulating different sales volumes can help you better understand your business's potential.

It's not enough to know how much you sell. It's important to know how much you need to sell.

🔮 Simulate Before Running a Promotion

Imagine that you're considering a promotion to increase sales.

Before simply lowering your price, you can evaluate how a particular sales volume could affect your results.

A promotion may increase the number of units sold, but it can also reduce the profit generated by each unit.

That's why pricing decisions should consider both price and sales volume, along with the costs associated with each sale.

With PocketChef's sales simulation feature, you can analyse different scenarios and make decisions with more information.

💡 What If You Increase Your Price?

Another scenario worth considering is a price increase.

If your costs have gone up, you may need to adjust your selling price.

But what could happen to your overall result?

Looking at different scenarios can help you explore that question.

You can compare different sales volumes and prices and analyse how these scenarios may affect your business.

This turns pricing from an isolated decision into part of your broader business planning.

📊 Look at the Whole Business, Not Just One Recipe

A food business has many moving parts.

There is the product your customer buys.

There are the ingredients used to make it.

There are the expenses associated with selling it.

There are the fixed expenses required to keep the business operating.

And there is the sales volume needed to make the entire operation financially sustainable.

The new Fixed Expenses feature connects these pieces and allows PocketChef to provide a much broader view of product pricing.

🚀 From a Pricing Calculator to a Business Management Tool

PocketChef started by helping food entrepreneurs calculate the right prices for their products.

But the app has grown far beyond simply answering the question of how much to charge.

With Variable Selling Expenses, you can account for taxes, delivery fees, commissions and other costs associated with making a sale.

Now, with Fixed Expenses, you can also include the recurring costs required to keep your business running.

Together, these features provide a more complete view of:

It's a significant shift: instead of looking only at the price of a product, you can start understanding the economics of your entire business.

❤️ Discover PocketChef's New Fixed Expenses Feature

Rent, utilities, phone service and other recurring expenses are part of running a food business.

Ignoring these costs when analysing your finances can lead to poor decisions about pricing, sales targets and profitability.

With PocketChef's new Fixed Expenses feature, you can register these costs and allow the app to use them to provide a more detailed financial analysis.

See how your recipes contribute to covering your fixed expenses, understand how many products you need to sell to reach break-even, and simulate different sales scenarios to see how they could affect your business.

Knowing what it costs to make a product is important. Knowing what it costs to keep your business running is just as important.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions About Fixed Expenses and Pricing

What are fixed expenses?

Fixed expenses are recurring business costs that remain relatively stable over a given period regardless of how many products you produce or sell. Examples include rent, phone service, internet, utilities and other recurring expenses.

What is the difference between fixed expenses and variable selling expenses?

Fixed expenses are recurring costs that generally do not change directly with the number of products sold. Variable selling expenses are costs associated with sales and may increase or decrease depending on the volume or value of your sales.

Why should I include rent when analysing my product prices?

Rent is a business expense that must be paid to keep your operation running. Your sales need to generate enough money to cover rent and your other fixed expenses in addition to the costs directly associated with your products.

Can PocketChef show how much of my fixed expenses is associated with each recipe?

Yes. Based on your registered fixed expenses and sales information, PocketChef can provide an analysis of the portion of your fixed expenses associated with each recipe.

What is the break-even point?

The break-even point is the level of sales at which the revenue generated is enough to cover the costs and expenses considered in the business operation. After reaching break-even, additional sales can contribute to profit after the other costs associated with those sales are considered.

How can I find out how many products I need to sell to make a profit?

You need to consider your business costs and expenses, the contribution generated by each sale and your sales volume. PocketChef uses the information you enter to help you understand how many sales are needed to cover your fixed expenses and reach break-even.

Can I simulate a specific number of sales in PocketChef?

Yes. PocketChef allows you to simulate a scenario using a specific number of sales so you can analyse how that sales volume may affect your business results.

Can I use sales simulations to set business goals?

Yes. Simulations can help turn your fixed expenses and required revenue into more concrete sales targets for your business.

Why isn't knowing my ingredient cost enough?

Ingredient cost is only one part of running a food business. You may also have fixed expenses, variable selling expenses, production costs and other business expenses that affect your final profitability.

Does PocketChef's Fixed Expenses feature work together with Variable Selling Expenses?

Yes. The two features complement each other. Fixed Expenses represent recurring business costs, while Variable Selling Expenses represent costs associated with making sales. Considering both provides a more complete view of your business profitability.

🚀 Start Looking at Your Business Differently

Your business is more than a collection of recipes.

Behind every product there are ingredients, labour, equipment, rent, utilities, fees, taxes, customers and many other factors.

The better you understand this structure, the better your business decisions can become.

With the new Fixed Expenses feature, PocketChef takes another step toward turning product pricing into a complete business management tool.

Track your expenses. Understand your break-even point. Simulate your sales. Plan your growth.

Because running a business with real numbers is much better than running it in the dark.