Glazed Donuts (batch of 12) Cost Calculator
Yeast-raised glazed donuts fried at home, a batch of 12. Ingredient cost at US grocery prices, including the frying oil, with the per-donut cost and typical shop price. Prefilled with US average ingredient costs. Edit any quantity or price to match what you actually pay, and the math updates as you type.
How much does it cost to make Glazed Donuts (batch of 12)?
About $4.69 for 12 glazed yeast donuts made at home, or 39 cents each, against a typical $1.75 shop price, a 22.3% food cost. The biggest single line is not flour or butter but the frying oil, at 96 cents.
Where the money goes
| Frying oil (share of a 48 oz fill) | 20.5% · $0.96 | |
|---|---|---|
| Milk | 17.1% · $0.80 | |
| Butter | 14.9% · $0.70 | |
| All-purpose flour | 13.6% · $0.64 | |
| Powdered sugar glaze | 11.9% · $0.56 | |
| Eggs | 10.7% · $0.50 | |
| Yeast | 9.6% · $0.45 | |
| Sugar | 1.7% · $0.08 |
What 36 of them return at different prices
| Your price | Food cost % | Over ingredients, each | Over ingredients, 36 |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1.31 | 29.8% | $0.92 | $33.12 |
| $1.75 US average | 22.3% | $1.36 | $48.96 |
| $2.19 | 17.8% | $1.80 | $64.80 |
Ingredients only. Labor, packaging, fuel, and stall or platform fees come out of these figures.
The most expensive ingredient in a homemade donut is the one you do not eat. A dozen donuts absorbs only a few ounces of oil, but frying at home means filling a pot with 48 oz or more. Charged as a quarter of the fill, which assumes the oil is strained and reused for three more batches, the oil is 96 cents of a $4.69 batch, more than the flour, the butter, or the glaze. Use it once and throw it out, and the oil alone is $3.84 and the batch costs $7.57.
This is the gap between a home donut and a shop donut. A shop runs a fryer holding far more oil, filters it daily, and fries hundreds of donuts through each fill, so oil per donut is a few cents. The rest of the recipe, $3.73 of flour, milk, butter, eggs, yeast, sugar, and glaze here, costs a shop less at wholesale but is much the same. Shops sell a glazed donut for around $1.75, a 22.3% food cost on the home recipe and less at shop prices; the margin in donuts comes from frying at volume.
For a cottage baker or market stall, that makes batch size the whole game. Fry two dozen through the same oil and the oil per donut halves; fry one dozen a week and every donut carries a full share. Many home sellers switch to baked donuts for exactly this reason, trading the texture of a fried yeast donut for a cost that does not depend on how many times the pot gets used.