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How do you price your meat if you do not know where to start? For many small and mid-sized farms, pricing meat feels like guesswork. Costs keep rising, grocery store prices feel impossible to compete with, and customers all seem to have different expectations.
Yet pricing is one of the most important decisions you make as a farm business. Your meat prices determine whether you are building a sustainable operation or slowly losing money on every sale.
This guide breaks down exactly how to price meat products for profit, using a proven pricing framework and real-world examples from Black Barn Farms, a pasture-raised farm in Dryden, Ontario. You will learn how to calculate meat prices, how beef pricing really works, how to price different cuts, and how to use data and ecommerce tools like Local Line to price smarter.
So how do you price meat in a way that actually works?
At its core, meat pricing comes down to three factors:
The mistake many farms make is starting with market prices and working backwards. In reality, pricing should always start with your costs and desired margins, then be adjusted based on demand and positioning.
If you sell pasture-raised, regenerative, or specialty meat, you are not competing with grocery stores. You are selling a premium product with a completely different value proposition.
Dowload our FREE guide to selling meat by weight profitably online
One of the most common questions farmers ask is how to calculate meat prices in a way that actually reflects their business reality.
Here is the simplest and most reliable approach for calculating meat pricing.
First, use this cost per pound formula:
Cost per pound = Total production costs ÷ Total sellable pounds
Production costs should include:
Example cost per pound calculation:
If your total costs for a beef animal are $3,600 and you sell 600 lbs of packaged meat
Cost per pound = $3,600 ÷ 600 = $6 per lb
Then, use this target price formula to calculate your minimum profitable selling price:
Target price = Cost per pound × Desired margin
Example target price calculation:
If your cost per pound is $6 and you want a 40 percent margin
Target price = $6 × 1.4 = $8.40 per lb
This gives you a baseline price that is profitable before you even think about market positioning or customer perception.
This single formula answers most pricing questions farmers have.
Many farmers wonder how the price of beef is determined and why beef prices vary so much between farms.
Beef pricing is influenced by:
A key concept here is yield.
A cow might weigh 1,200 lbs live, but only 60 to 65 percent becomes hanging weight, and only 60 to 70 percent of that becomes packaged meat. This means you often end up selling only 40 percent of the original animal weight.
This yield loss must be priced into every cut you sell.
Not all beef cuts are equal, and your pricing should reflect that. Some cuts sell quickly and command higher prices. Others move slowly and need strategic pricing.
Typical pricing tiers for beef are:
Premium cuts often subsidize slower moving products like ground beef. This means your pricing strategy should balance the full carcass, not individual items in isolation.
A common mistake is underpricing ground beef and overpricing steaks. In reality, ground beef often drives volume and repeat orders, while steaks drive margins.
Read more about wholesale and retail cuts of meat
Meat prices and quality are directly connected, even if customers do not always realize it at first.
Pasture-raised, regenerative, and free-range meat costs more because:
This is why pasture-raised meat cannot and should not be priced like grocery store meat.
Black Barn Farms positions their meat as a premium product. As Sarah explains, they do not try to compete on price. They focus on quality, transparency, and building trust with customers who value how their food is produced.
In their words, they sell Cadillacs, not Kias.
One of the biggest pricing traps farmers fall into is comparing their meat prices to grocery store prices.
This comparison is almost always misleading.
Grocery store meat is:
Direct-to-consumer farms operate in a completely different model. You are selling traceable, locally produced, high quality food with a direct relationship to the customer.
Your prices should reflect that difference.
Your meat pricing should also change depending on where you sell.
Common sales channels:
Wholesale buyers expect lower prices because they take on marketing, distribution, and customer acquisition. Direct-to-consumer pricing should always be higher because you are providing the full experience.
This is why many farms maintain separate price lists for wholesale and retail.
Meat inventory plays a huge role in pricing strategy.
If you have freezers full of slow moving cuts, your cash is locked up in inventory. If you constantly sell out of certain items, your pricing may be too low.
Smart pricing requires tracking:
This is where data becomes more valuable than intuition.
Read more about top farm metrics for selling meat
Selling meat online requires more than just listing products. You need tools that support pricing, inventory, and customer behavior.
An effective online platform to sell meat should provide:
Local Line is built specifically for farm ecommerce and food hubs. It gives farmers the data they need to understand which products perform best, which cuts drive revenue, and how pricing impacts sales over time.
Instead of guessing, you can see exactly how your meat pricing performs in real conditions.
Black Barn Farms uses a structured approach to pricing:
Rather than chasing every customer, they focus on attracting customers who value quality and transparency. This allows them to maintain healthy margins and a sustainable business model.
Their success comes from treating pricing as a business system, not a one-time decision.
Pricing meat is not about copying grocery store prices or undercutting other farms. It is about understanding your costs, your value, and your customers.
The most successful farms treat pricing as an ongoing process:
With Local Line, you can turn pricing from guesswork into a data-driven strategy. From online sales reports to inventory management and customer insights, you get the tools you need to price your meat with confidence and build a profitable farm business.
Sell meat online with Local Line today - it’s quick and easy to get started
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