The market charges $45 for the table before you sell a single jar. The first sales of the morning pay that back; only after them are you making money. How many? The booth fee divided by what you clear on each unit — price minus what it cost to make — rounded up. Twelve jars at the Saturday market, and the thirteenth is yours.
A $45 booth, jam at $6 that costs $2.25 to make: $3.75 margin, 45 ÷ 3.75 = 12 jars to break even.
The example
Three markets with different fees and product mixes. The Sunday market costs more but the bread margin is higher; the neighborhood market is cheap but the muffins are thin-margin.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Market | Booth fee | Price | Unit cost | Margin/unit | Units to break even |
| 2 | Saturday downtown — jam | $45 | $6.00 | $2.25 | $3.75 | 12 |
| 3 | Sunday farm — bread | $65 | $8.00 | $3.10 | $4.90 | 14 |
| 4 | Neighborhood — muffins | $45 | $4.50 | $1.75 | $2.75 | 17 |
The formula
Margin per unit shown, then the break-even count:
How it works
Classic break-even, scaled to a card table:
C2-D2is contribution per unit: $6 price minus $2.25 of fruit, sugar, jar and lid is $3.75 toward the fee.B2/E2is how many of those it takes to reach $45: exactly 12.ROUNDUP(...,0)handles the usual case where it is not exact. $65 over $4.90 is 13.27 — 13 loaves leave you $1.30 short, so it is 14.- Compare markets by this number and by your typical sales. A market where you break even at 17 and usually sell 20 is barely worth the morning.
Add the other fixed costs of the day to the booth fee — fuel, parking, the helper's lunch — and the break-even count tells you the real story: ROUNDUP((B2+Fuel+Parking)/E2,0).
Try it: interactive demo
Enter the booth fee, your selling price and what one unit costs you to make.
Variations
Profit for the day
Units sold times margin, minus the booth fee. Negative means the table cost more than it earned.
Mixed products
With several items, use the average margin weighted by what you usually sell.
Pitfalls & errors
Unit cost is ingredients, packaging and labels — not your time. Add labor if you want to, but decide deliberately; most market vendors track cash break-even first and hourly pay second.
Track actual units sold next to the break-even column each week. Three markets where you regularly clear the fee by 10 a.m. and one where you never do is a decision that makes itself.
If price is at or below unit cost the margin is zero or negative and the formula returns #DIV/0! or a negative count. That is the sheet telling you the product cannot pay for a booth at any volume.
Practice workbook
Frequently asked questions
Should I include the market's percentage-of-sales fee?
How is this different from the general break-even-units recipe?
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