FOOD ROW — COST & YIELD
June Street Fair · Gallatin TN

LEDGER v2.4

The pretty side of the fair is the grandmother's chow-chow jar and the cornbread coming out golden. This is the other side of that coin: the pounds, the yields, the wholesale dollars, and the one number that tells me we are about to run out and it is time to move a line over. The recipe page is the craft; this is the ledger underneath it.

MASTER COPY — DO NOT POCKET THIS ONE

What I order, in plain pounds

ItemLbsWholesaleYield %Cost/serv

Collard greens (washed, destemmed)48$0.86/lb62$0.92

Smoked turkey neck (for the pot liquor)9$3.10/lb88$0.63

Stone-ground cornmeal22$1.14/lb100$0.29

Buttermilk4 gal$3.80/gal100$0.19

Chow-chow (grandmother's jar, 6 jars)—$0 (family)100$0.00

Bacon fat (rendered, for the skillet)3$1.90/lb70$0.11

Food cost / 260 servings$2.14

Yield % is the number people skip and it is the one that breaks you. You do not serve 48 lb of collards; after washing, destemming, and the two-hour simmer that eats water you serve 30 lb. If you order by the raw pound and quote a price by the plate, you are losing 38 cents on every collard plate before you even pay for the cup. The yield column of anything is the quiet place the money hides.

Yield math, shown once so I never forget

Collards, raw → cooked: 48 lb × 0.62 = 29.8 lb cooked; at 5 oz per serving that is 95 collard plates
Cornbread, batch: 22 lb meal + 4 gal buttermilk = 6 sheet pans, each cut 24 → 144 squares, 6 per plate feeds 24 more
A plate: 5 oz collards + 1 square cornbread + pot-liquor splash + chow-chow spoon = the $7 plate
Break-even: Cost $2.14, sell $7 → $4.86 margin/plate = $1262 at 260 plates

The reorder trigger

I do not run out of anything twice. When the collard pan drops past half and the line still wraps the tent, we flex the second pan of pot liquor forward and I make the call to hold the chow-chow at a spoon per plate instead of two. The trigger is written on the board as: half a pan = phone call. One pan left always sits behind the batch in the pass; that is the emergency pan the line never sees until it needs it.

Vendor surrounded by collard greens at an outdoor market stall — Fig. 1 — The yield column is the quiet place the money hides. Photo via Pexels (royalty-free).

What the ledger taught me

Youth workshop tie-in: The same yield discipline runs the kids' collard-destemming station; a 40-lb order becomes a counting lesson and nobody eats wasted stems.
Where the margin goes: Every year the fair reorders from the stall that quotes whole-sale and delivers the yield number honest. Friends feed the fair first, then get paid.
Source, because a number you can't cite is a guess: Wholesale produce lines move weekly; see the live market brief below rather than quoting this page forever.

Live produce brief