This is going to get a little math-y here…
In this post I compare the cost of ingredients. We bake and sell a lot of Keto cookies at cardnl. While our cookies are less expensive than our keto competitors, some people compare the cost of a keto cookie to that of a cookie containing wheat flour and refined sugar. Not a fair comparison, for this reason I wanted to write a blog post on the difference in cost between ingredients used in a keto cookie vs a regular (wheat and sugar) cookie.
Production Scale
Production scale is one factor – most (if not all) specialty diet cookies are made at a much smaller scale than oh let’s say… Nabisco. Scale is a big factor for cost (think Amazon vs. your local bookstore). The cost of scaling is significant.
We went to IBIE (International Baking Industry Exposition) in Las Vegas last year. The automated tools for large scale production are INCREDIBLE. Smaller companies are at a huge disadvantage. If you ever get angry about a higher price from a small business, you are either completely uniformed or you’re just cold. And if you complain about higher prices from a smaller company (comparing the price to a much larger company) you can never say you support local or support small business and families trying to eke out a living in a tough environment. You don’t support small business, move on and enjoy your cold, dark reality. I hope McDonald’s and Amazon will give you all the happiness you need.
Ingredients
When removing refined sugars and wheat the price grows exponentially.
Here are rough comparisons on prices we pay vs. the less healthy alternatives.
Sweetener
- Keto (no impact to blood sugar) sweetener – $3.00 lb
- vs (huge impact to blood sugar) refined sugar $0.40 lb
This means that the keto sweetener blend we use has a 650% increase in cost compared to refined sugar. This is a comparison between ingredients needed to produce a product that will not raise blood sugar vs. a product that contributes to real illness.
Flour
- Almond Flour – $4.00 lb
- vs Wheat Flour – $0.12 lb
I get all the jokes about gluten, they’re funny. Har. Reality is, gluten’s not ideal for anyone (not just those who are diagnosed celiac). It makes things tasty and the texture is great… but the cost to your health… not so great. Seeing the difference here illustrates a 3,200% increase in cost from high quality, blanched almond flour, and wheat flour.
These are two important ingredients and serve the purpose in illustrating the cost difference. Obviously there are other ingredients, and the price differences are all fairly comparable.
What is the Cost of Keto Cookie?
Our keto chocolate chip cookie is $2.49 – and this is what it looks like:
Our cookies come with a guarantee: ZERO rise to blood sugar (seriously) and it will not take you out of nutritional ketosis (if you’re doing a keto diet this is super important).
Health Impact of Sugar
Here’s a disclaimer: when you eat sugar (like in a regular cookie) your blood glucose becomes elevated. If you are constantly feeding your body too much glucose (like eating a lot of cookies/carbs) and not using the energy being generated… that energy is stored as fat. This is why consuming too much sugar makes you fat. In turn, too much sugar creates what is called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance causes: type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and metabolic syndrome.
I think it probably goes without stating… having any of these diseases is unpleasant and very costly.
Cookie Comparisons
Let’s compare our cookie price vs. a boutique cookie shop (in a strip mall) cookie price – which is a bit closer comparison than Nabisco. For this comparison I’ll use Crumbl Cookies (since they just opened in our town).
Chocolate Chip Cookie from Crumbl is $3.58 (and to be fair, is larger at about 160 grams).
Cookie Cost Breakdown
The cardnl chocolate chip cookie is 55 grams for reference.
If we were to use the two ingredients listed above as our standard for these two cookies, the math would look something like this:
- Sugar per gram cost: .000883
- Wheat per gram cost: .0002649
- Keto Sweetener per gram cost: .00662252
- Blanched roasted almond floor per gram cost: .00883002
Obviously there are other costs involved with the ingredients, staffing, facility, equipment, advertising, insurance, etc… but this will give us a rough idea of the mark up difference between the two:
- Sweetener & Flour Cost for Keto Cookie (.00772627 per gram) x 55 grams = $0.4249
- Sugar & Flour Cost for Crumbl Cookie (.00057395 per gram) x 160 grams = $.091832
AGAIN – this is not counting ALL the other costs (and actual ingredients – only the cost of the sugar and flour – for comparison)
- Markup for our Keto Cookie is $2.0651 – a 486% increase
- Markup for Crumbl Cookie is $3.488 – a 3,798% increase
This displays (with ROUGH numbers – and not counting all the other factors needed to actually make the cookie) how companies making cookies with unhealthy ingredients vs. those making cookies with healthy ingredients are actually MUCH more expensive in relation to the actual mark up.
Cookies In Conclusion
It’s hard to understand the true cost of products without all of the information. And I will say, cookies are not a necessity, unless they are… for you. (winky face) At cardnl, we make cookies that both type 1 and type 2 diabetics can eat without worrying about their blood glucose getting too high. We make cookies that those on a keto diet can eat and not worry about getting kicked out of ketosis. We make cookies that taste great that kids can eat without getting a sugar rush AND ACTIN THE FOOL! We make keto cookies as a replacement to the sugar filled cookies that may help to lead to further health concerns.
We’re proud of what we do and we hope this helps to clarify why it may seem on the surface that keto cookies are more expensive.
Want to make our soft batch cookies at home? Here’s the recipe: Keto Soft Batch Cookie Recipe
Much love!