How Much Should You Sell Guacamole For? (2026 Pricing Guide)

Guacamole looks like easy money. Four avocados, a lime and a half, half an onion and a handful of cilantro turn into a bowl people fight over at every party. So when you set a tub on your farmers market table, the hard part is not making it. The hard part is the price.

Price it too low and one bad avocado week wipes out your profit. Price it too high and shoppers walk to the grocery store, where a 15 ounce bowl of Wholly Guacamole was $5.37 at one Walmart on October 9, 2026. And unlike a jar of jam, guacamole turns brown in days and needs a fridge the whole way from your kitchen to the customer.

This guide works out a real number. It lists what eleven small guacamole vendors charge today, runs a well-known recipe through this week's avocado prices, adds kitchen rent from three real kitchens, and shows what each way of selling takes off a $9 tub.

How Much Should You Sell Guacamole For?

Price an 8 ounce tub of handmade guacamole at $9 to $11 and a pint (16 ounces) at 1.3 to 1.7 times the tub price, which works out to $12 to $15 for a $9 tub or $14 to $19 for an $11 tub. Six small vendors who list an 8 ounce size posted $6.99 to $11.95 on October 9, 2026, with a median of $8.50. That count includes two whose 8 ounce tub was sold out or unavailable that day. Six who sold a pint charged $8 to $20.25, with a median of $12. A $9 tub is about 4.2 times the $2.12 of ingredients and container inside it.

That multiple looks big, but guacamole is expensive to sell even when it is cheap to make. Before you pick a number, check that you are allowed to sell guacamole from where you plan to make it. Our guide to which foods count as TCS food explains why foods that need a fridge get treated differently, and the legal section below covers four states.

Scroll sideways to see every size and price.

Ingredient costs come from the Cookie and Kate "Best Guacamole" recipe, which yields 2 1/2 cups, priced with grocery ad averages from the USDA report dated October 2, 2026. The $1.41 avocado is WebstaurantStore's regular price for a 48-count case. Party bowl costs treat a pound as about 2 cups by volume, which is our estimate. Your label, kitchen rent, booth fee and time are not in the ingredient column; the sections below add them.

Three things decide where you land in that range:

• What you pay for avocados. At 97 cents each, an 8 ounce tub costs $2.12 to make. At $1.41 each, it costs $2.82.
• Where you make it. Making guacamole at home in Texas or Wyoming costs nothing in rent. Rent a kitchen at $25 an hour instead and each tub of a 35-tub session carries about $2.14 of it.
• How many tubs turn brown before they sell. One popular home recipe gives leftovers about 3 days in the fridge, so every tub you throw out raises the cost of the ones you sold.

If you rent a kitchen, start at $10. The step-by-step section shows why $9 can leave a renting vendor with nothing.

What Do Small Guacamole Makers Charge Right Now?

Eleven small US vendors who make guacamole themselves listed $6.50 to $14.99 for their smallest container on October 9, 2026, and by the ounce they ranged from 50 cents to $1.49, with a median of 94 cents. They are farms, farm markets, delis and one caterer. Every price was read on the seller's own website that day.

Swipe left to see each vendor's price per ounce.

Every price here came from the seller's own product page, loaded October 9, 2026; Olden Organics' guacamole is sold on Poco Pizza's page. Locations are the ones each site states; no location means the page we loaded did not give one. We counted a half pint as 8 ounces and a pint as 16 ounces. Pints and deli tubs measure volume while most store tubs state net weight; we treated an ounce of each as equal, which is close for guacamole but not exact. Barth's says its price is an estimate that is adjusted to the actual weight. Linvilla's tub showed Sold out and Fresh by 4Roots' half pint showed unavailable; both prices are listed as posted.

What the table tells you:

• Small tubs carry the highest price per ounce. All five of the most expensive rows by the ounce are 8 ounce or half pint tubs, from $1.00 to $1.49.
• A pint is the value size. Five of the six pints came in at 94 cents an ounce or less. Milk Pail's $20.25 pint was the exception, at $1.27 an ounce.
• Frozen and farm-pickup guacamole sits at the bottom. Edible Earth sells its 16 ounce tub frozen for $8, and Olden Organics takes orders until Friday morning so each tub is made fresh for Saturday pickup at $6.50.

If you sell in a small town, start near $9 for 8 ounces. If your market already supports $8 sourdough and $12 jars of honey, $11 is in line with what Glaser and Milk Pail ask.

How Does Homemade Guacamole Compare to Wholly Guacamole and Store Tubs?

Grocery guacamole cost 36 to 67 cents an ounce on October 9, 2026, while the eleven small vendors above had a median of 94 cents, so handmade guacamole usually runs about 1.4 to 2.6 times the store price per ounce. The cheapest store guacamole by the ounce was Wholly Guacamole Classic Mild, 15 ounces, at $5.37 on Walmart's Instacart page.

Swipe sideways to compare store prices.

These came from each store's Instacart-run shopping page the same day, October 9, 2026. Prices on those pages can be higher than the shelf price in the store, and they change by location and week.

Three ways to use this comparison without letting it pull your price down:

1. Know why the store tub is cheap. WebstaurantStore's listing for Wholly Guacamole says the company uses "high-pressure processing to kill bacteria and mold," which extends shelf life. That longer shelf life, and the factory volume behind it, is a cost advantage you cannot copy in a home or rented kitchen.
2. Treat store tubs as your floor. Store guacamole in 8 ounce tubs ran $3.99 to $5.39 on October 9, 2026, from We Guac at Sprouts to Fresh Thyme's own. Your fresh tub should sit well above the top of that range.
3. Sell what the store cannot. Made this morning, lime you can taste, your heat level, no preservatives. Those are the reasons $9 feels fair.

Our salsa pricing guide finds the same pattern for jars of salsa, and our hummus pricing guide does the math for another dip that has to stay cold.

Can You Make Guacamole at Home to Sell?

Only in states whose home kitchen rules allow food that needs a fridge. Traditional cottage food laws cover shelf-stable food, and guacamole has to be kept cold. The FDA Food Code 2026, the FDA's model rule book for restaurants and food shops, lists "cut tomatoes or mixtures of cut tomatoes" as time/temperature control for safety food, usually shortened to TCS food, and many guacamole recipes add diced tomato. Leaving the tomato out does not change the answer: the state health department in Arkansas puts "Fresh sauces (i.e. guacamole or refrigerator salsa)" on the not-allowed list in its July 2025 guide, because the state's home food law covers only food that does not need refrigeration. Of the four states we checked on October 9, 2026, Texas and Wyoming allow guacamole from a home kitchen under their own rules, and Arkansas and Michigan do not.

Swipe the table to read all four states.

Checked October 9, 2026 on each state's own site: the Texas Department of State Health Services cottage food page, Wyoming Statutes 11-49-102 and 11-49-103, the Arkansas Department of Health's Homemade Food Production Guidelines dated July 28, 2025, and the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development's "What Can I Make?" page. Check your own state before your first sale, because these rules change.

If you live in a state like Arkansas or Michigan, the practical route is a licensed commercial kitchen you rent by the hour. The kitchen section below shows what that rent does to each tub. Our guides to the Arkansas Food Freedom Act and Wyoming's food freedom law explain what each state does let you make at home.

What Does One Tub of Guacamole Cost to Make?

One 8 ounce tub of guacamole costs about $2.12 to make, tub and lid included, when avocados cost 97 cents each. That is what a Hass avocado averaged in grocery store ads, according to the USDA's weekly report of grocery store produce ads, the edition dated October 2, 2026. It covers ingredients and the container only. Rent, your booth and your time come later.

We priced Cookie and Kate's "Best Guacamole," a popular recipe that yields 2 1/2 cups: 4 medium ripe avocados, 1/2 cup finely chopped white onion, 1/4 cup chopped cilantro, 1 small jalapeño, 3 tablespoons of lime juice from about 1 1/2 limes, 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Two and a half cups is 20 fluid ounces, enough for two and a half 8 ounce tubs, so two batches fill five. Spread over 2 1/2 tubs, each tub costs $2.02 in ingredients. Samples come out of a separate batch, priced in the samples section below.

Scroll right to see what each ingredient costs.

Produce prices are the USDA's national average advertised prices for conventional produce in its report dated October 2, 2026, loaded October 9. Onion, jalapeño and cilantro weights come from USDA FoodData Central. The quarter bunch of cilantro and the salt and coriander cost are our estimates. Labels are not included.

What changes these numbers in real life:

• Avocado size. The recipe says it makes 2 1/2 to 3 cups "depending on your avocados." USDA FoodData Central puts one California avocado at 136 grams once the skin and seed are gone. Bigger fruit means more tubs per batch.
• Tomato. This recipe leaves tomato out. Adding a diced tomato stretches the batch, but it also puts cut tomato in your tub, which the FDA Food Code lists by name as TCS food.
• Fresh lime or bottled. Lime juice is the second biggest cost at 66 cents a batch. Bottled juice is an option, but Glaser Organic Farms, Fresh by 4Roots and Miles Farmers Market all mention fresh or freshly squeezed lime on their product pages.

Why Do Avocados Decide Your Guacamole Price?

Avocados are 77% of the ingredient cost in this recipe at 97 cents each, and 83% at $1.41 each, so the avocado price matters more than everything else in the bowl combined. Each tub uses 1.6 avocados, which means every 10 cents on the price of one avocado moves your tub cost by 16 cents.

Here is what four real avocado prices, all loaded on October 9, 2026, do to one batch:

• 97 cents, the USDA's ad average for one Hass avocado. $5.05 a batch, $2.12 a tub.
• $1.27, the USDA's ad average for a large Hass avocado. $6.25 a batch, $2.60 a tub.
• $1.41, WebstaurantStore's regular price in a 48-count case ($67.49). $6.79 a batch, $2.82 a tub. Members of its paid Plus program saw $54.00 a case, about $1.13 each.
• $1.79, a single avocado from KairosGO on Homegrown. $8.33 a batch, $3.43 a tub.

Buying by the case did not beat a grocery sale price that week. A case only makes sense in a week when it costs less per avocado than your store's price and you can use all 48 before they go soft, roughly 12 batches, or 30 tubs.

How Much Do Avocado Prices Move From Week to Week?

Enough to change your cost by about 14 cents a tub in a single week. In the USDA's weekly grocery ad report dated October 2, 2026, the average advertised price for a single Hass avocado was 97 cents across 3,063 store ads, up from 88 cents the week before and down 16% from $1.15 in the same week last year. A four-count mesh bag averaged $4.02 in that same report.

What those three numbers mean for one 8 ounce tub:

• Last week, at 88 cents. About $1.98 a tub.
• This week, at 97 cents. $2.12 a tub.
• The same week last year, at $1.15. About $2.41 a tub.

That is a 43 cent swing per tub between the cheapest and most expensive of those three weeks, on the same recipe.

Avocados also ripen on their own schedule. A case bought on Monday for a Saturday market can be rock hard or past its best, and an avocado you throw away still costs what you paid. Buy a few days ahead, keep a couple of extra avocados per batch, and count the ones you toss in your cost.

What Does a Rented Kitchen Add to Each Tub?

Kitchen rent added $1.29 to $2.83 to each tub in our example of a 3-hour session that makes 35 tubs, using rates three shared kitchens posted on October 9, 2026. If your state lets you make guacamole at home, this line is $0, which is the biggest reason someone cooking at home in Texas or Wyoming can charge less.

Drag the table sideways to compare kitchen rates.

Each rate comes from the kitchen's own website, loaded October 9, 2026. The 3 hours and 35 tubs (seven double batches, 56 avocados) are our example. Capital Kitchens and Tampa Bay Kitchen both ask for a $1,000,000 liability insurance certificate. Rockwood rents cold storage separately at $75 a month per rack.

What moves the rent per tub:

• Batch size. Rent is charged by the hour, so 50 tubs in the same 3 hours cuts Rockwood's peak rent to $1.50 a tub, if you can sell 50.
• Monthly minimums. Capital Kitchens' 12-hour minimum costs $396 a month whether you use it or not. Four 3-hour sessions use it up exactly.
• Cold storage. Guacamole has to sit cold between the kitchen and the market. Ask any kitchen what fridge space costs before you sign.

Our guide to finding and renting a commissary kitchen lists the paperwork and questions a kitchen will expect from you.

How Do You Price Guacamole, Step by Step?

Add your ingredients, rent, booth fee, time and an allowance for unsold tubs, then compare the total to the $9 to $11 that small vendors charge for 8 ounces. In our example, a vendor renting a $25 an hour kitchen who sells 28 of 35 tubs has a true cost of about $8.55 a tub, so $9 loses money once card fees come out. A Texas home cook in the same example lands near $5.87.

The booth fee, hours and hourly pay below are examples; use your own. The example leaves out labels, ice packs, gas, insurance, samples and your Homegrown plan, so add those per tub before you trust the last step.

• Cost one batch. Price your recipe at today's avocado price and divide by the tubs it fills. In this guide that is $2.02 a tub plus 10 cents for the container: $2.12.
• Add kitchen rent per tub. Divide one session's rent by the tubs you make. Three hours at $25 is $75, or $2.14 a tub across 35 tubs. At home, in a state that allows it, it is $0.
• Add your booth. Divide your market's booth fee by the tubs you think will sell. A $30 fee over 28 sold tubs is $1.07 each.
• Pay yourself. Three hours of pitting, chopping, mashing, filling and labeling at $20 an hour is $60, or $2.14 for each of the 28 tubs you sell.
• Add an allowance for unsold tubs. If 7 of 35 go unsold, the ingredients, containers and rent inside them add $1.07 to each sold tub when you rent the kitchen and 53 cents at home.
• Total it. Rented kitchen: $2.12 + $2.14 + $1.07 + $2.14 + $1.07 = about $8.55 a tub. Home kitchen: $2.12 + $0 + $1.07 + $2.14 + $0.53 = about $5.87. Each total uses unrounded figures, so the rounded parts add up a cent lower.
• Check what is left after fees. Card processing on Homegrown is 2.9% plus 30 cents: 56 cents on a $9 tub and 59 cents on a $10 tub. Renting, $9 leaves you 11 cents short and $10 leaves 86 cents. At home, $9 leaves $2.57, after you have already paid yourself $20 an hour.

That rented-kitchen line is the one to watch. If all 35 tubs sell, the same tub costs about $6.84 instead of $8.55, so selling out is worth about $1.71 a tub. Three ways to get there:

1. Make only what you can sell. Count what you sold the last three markets and make that many.
2. Book cheaper hours. Rockwood's off-peak rate cuts rent from $2.14 to $1.71 a tub.
3. Take orders before you buy avocados. A tub that is paid for before you cut the first avocado never turns brown in your cooler.

Our guide to pricing food products for a farmers market covers the cost-plus method behind these steps for the rest of your table.

How Fast Does Guacamole Go Brown, and What Does That Cost You?

By one popular recipe's count, guacamole keeps well for about 3 days, so an unsold tub turns into lost money fast. Cookie and Kate's recipe says leftovers "will keep well, refrigerated, for about 3 days" with a chunk of onion on top and plastic wrap over the container, and the browned top gets scooped off. Food safety rules give a longer outer limit: the FDA Food Code lets restaurants and food shops hold ready-to-eat TCS food at 41°F for up to seven days, counting the day it was made as Day 1. Glaser Organic Farms, which sells guacamole, lists a refrigerated shelf life of 7 to 10 days for its 8 ounce tub on its product page. Your shopper, though, buys with their eyes, and a brown top usually stays on your table.

Here is what it costs when 7 of the 35 tubs do not sell, using this guide's numbers:

Swipe to see the cost of each unsold tub.

Figured from the cost and rent tables in this guide, prices of October 9, 2026. Totals use unrounded costs. This counts only what is inside the tubs; the booth fee and your time also spread over fewer sold tubs.

How guacamole vendors keep this number small:

• Make it close to market day. Olden Organics closes guacamole orders Friday morning so each tub is made fresh for Saturday pickup.
• Fill tubs to the top. Less air in the container means less browning, the same reason Cookie and Kate tells you to pick "a suitably sized container."
• Date every lid. Texas requires the date made on the label of TCS cottage food, and a date on the lid helps you sell the oldest tub first.
• Sell the rest frozen, if your rules allow it. Edible Earth Farm sells its 16 ounce tubs frozen at $8.

What Should Pints, Party Bowls and Spicy Versions Sell For?

Price a pint at $12 to $15 next to a $9 tub and $14 to $19 next to an $11 tub, a party bowl at about $10 to $12 a pound for 3 pounds and $9 to $11 a pound for 5, and a spicy or loaded version at $1 to $2 more than plain. Miles Farmers Market in Solon, Ohio, showed the bulk pattern on October 9, 2026: $9.99 for a 1 pound pint, $29.99 for a 3 pound bowl and $44.95 for a 5 pound bowl.

A pint costs you $4.15 at 97-cent avocados, with an 11 cent container, so $12 to $15 is about 2.9 to 3.6 times your cost. That ratio is lower than the 8 ounce tub's, which is fine. A pint takes one fill instead of two.

How to set each one:

• Pint. 1.3 to 1.7 times your 8 ounce price: $12 to $15 next to a $9 tub, and $14 to $19 next to an $11 tub. Fresh by 4Roots prices its pint at 1.6 times its half pint ($10.99 and $6.99), and Milk Pail at 1.7 times ($20.25 and $11.95).
• Party bowls. Price by the pound and ask for orders 48 hours ahead. A 5 pound bowl is about 10 cups, or 4 batches of this recipe and 16 avocados.
• Spicy, mango or bacon versions. Add the cost of the add-in, then add $1 to $2. Garlic or extra jalapeño costs you pennies; mango or cotija cheese costs more.
• Guacamole with chips. If you sell a bag of chips with the tub, price the bundle at your tub price plus the chips' full price, then round down a dollar.

What Do Free Samples of Guacamole Cost?

At this guide's costs, one ounce of guacamole costs about 25 cents, so 40 half-ounce tasting spoons use one 20 ounce batch and cost about $5.05 a market day. That is a little more than half the price of one $9 tub, and for a food people buy on taste, it is worth it.

A simple sample plan:

1. Make the sample batch on purpose. Count it as a marketing cost of about $5.05 a market day, not as tubs you planned to sell, so your tub cost stays honest.
2. Serve on a chip, not in a bowl. A pre-scooped chip or small cup keeps hands out of the guacamole.
3. Keep the sample tub on ice. Guacamole left in the sun all morning warms up and browns on top, which makes it a food safety problem and a poor advertisement for your tubs.
4. Sample your plain version. Let the basic recipe sell itself, then mention the spicy one.

Sampling rules are set locally, so ask your market manager and health department first. Our farmers market sampling tips cover table setup and how to turn a taste into a sale.

What Do Selling Fees Take Off a $9 Tub of Guacamole?

Selling fees take 38 cents to $1.56 off a $9 tub, depending on whether the card is swiped at your table or used online, and on who pays the platform's own fee. We read every fee below on each platform's own pricing page on October 9, 2026.

Swipe sideways for all eight fee columns.

Fees read on October 9, 2026 at findhomegrown.com/signup, hotplate.com/pricing, squareup.com/us/en/pricing and shopify.com/pricing. Figured on a $9 price with no tax or tip, rounded to the cent. If a platform charges card processing on the full total with fees and tax, it runs a few cents higher. The monthly column adds the plan (billed annually where there is a choice) to 50 times the per-tub cost.

For guacamole, the fee is not the biggest cost of selling. Seven brown tubs in a cooler cost $29.86 in the rented kitchen example, more than a month of card processing on Square at the table. Over four Saturday markets a month, that is about $119, more than the monthly figure on any row in this table. Knowing on Wednesday that 28 regulars want guacamole on Saturday is how you avoid it.

Sell Guacamole to Order So Nothing Turns Brown

Make guacamole for orders that are already paid, and the browning clock stops being your problem. In this guide's rented kitchen example, 7 unsold tubs out of 35 add $1.07 to every tub you did sell, which is almost twice the card fee on a $9 tub.

Homegrown is $10 per month billed annually with no percentage fees beyond standard payment processing, which on a $9 tub is 56 cents. Regulars reserve their guacamole on your storefront midweek, pay when they order, and collect it on the day and at the spot you set. What fits guacamole in particular:

• Order prep time. Set a lead time before each pickup date, so Saturday orders close early enough for you to buy and ripen avocados.
• A quantity on every listing. List 30 tubs, and the count drops on its own as orders come in, with an alert when you run low.
• Sizes and heat levels on one listing. An 8 ounce tub, a pint and a spicy version can each carry its own price under one product. Party bowls work the same way, as fixed sizes like 3 or 5 pounds.
• An ingredient list on every listing. A shopper who cannot eat raw onion or cilantro sees it before ordering.
• More than one pickup spot. Your Saturday market, a weekday market and your porch can sit under one storefront.

How it compares to what guacamole vendors try first. Hotplate, made for pre-order food sellers, has no monthly plan, but its default setting puts 5% plus 55 cents on top of what your guacamole buyer pays, so a $9 tub checks out at $10.00, and covering that yourself costs $1.56 a tub. Square is the cheapest choice at your table, at 38 cents a tub, though an online order on its free plan pays 60 cents. Shopify costs $29 a month billed yearly before apps and is made for full online stores that ship, which suits guacamole poorly, since a tub has to stay at 41°F or below the whole way to the buyer.

Where Homegrown falls short for a guacamole vendor. First-time customers have to make a Homegrown account before they can order. Homegrown has no drop or countdown release feature, so if you want a timed weekly guacamole drop, Hotplate offers that and Homegrown does not. Pricing by the pound is still on the roadmap, which is why party bowls go in as fixed sizes. Nothing on the platform makes a home kitchen legal in Arkansas or Michigan, and it cannot keep a tub at 41°F; your health department and your cooler still handle those. Your storefront shows up on the Homegrown marketplace, but expect most orders to come from regulars you send to your own link. Card processing of 2.9% plus 30 cents comes out of your side, and there is no setting to pass it to the shopper.

Want to see how it works for a refrigerated food? Start your Homegrown storefront and set this Saturday's guacamole as a pre-order with a two-day lead time. It takes about 15 minutes, and you can see real orders before you buy a single avocado.

Does Anyone Sell Guacamole on Homegrown Yet?

No Homegrown listing was called guacamole on October 9, 2026, out of 2,916 products, though one vendor makes a thick avocado salsa that comes close.

That gap is a chance. No Homegrown listing carries the name yet, so the first vendor to add one is the only guacamole on the marketplace, though most orders will still come from regulars you send to your own link. If you already sell salsa, adding a guacamole listing next to it takes a few minutes. List it as a pre-order only, with your prep time set, and you never make a tub nobody asked for.

Our guide to taking pre-orders for your food business walks through order cutoffs, pickup windows and what to tell regulars when you switch them over.

What Guacamole Pricing Mistakes Cost New Vendors the Most?

The most expensive mistake is setting your price in a cheap avocado week and never changing it. The others mostly come from treating guacamole like a shelf-stable product.

1. Pricing off grocery store guacamole. A $5.37 bowl of Wholly Guacamole is made with high-pressure processing and stocked by chains like Walmart and Pathmark. Your $9 tub is a different product.
2. Ignoring the avocado price. Every 10 cents on an avocado is 16 cents on your tub. Track it on your prep sheet.
3. Leaving out the brown tubs. When a fifth of a rented-kitchen batch goes unsold, every tub you did sell carries another $1.07.
4. Forgetting rent and time. In our example, rent and labor are about $4.29 of the $8.55 true cost of a rented-kitchen tub, double the ingredients.
5. Making guacamole at home in a state that does not allow it. Arkansas and Michigan do not. Check before you price a single tub.
6. Pricing the pint too close to the tub. A $10 pint next to a $9 tub sells twice the guacamole for $1 more. The two vendors above who list both sizes price the pint at 1.6 and 1.7 times the half pint.
7. Taking walk-up sales only. When a popular home recipe gives leftovers about 3 days, guessing is expensive. Pre-orders turn the guess into a count.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much should I charge for an 8 ounce container of guacamole?

Charge $9 to $11 for 8 ounces of homemade guacamole. On October 9, 2026, six small vendors listing an 8 ounce or half pint size posted between $6.99 and $11.95, and the middle two averaged $8.50. If you rent a commercial kitchen, start at $10, because in our example $9 left a renting vendor 11 cents short after card fees.

How much does it cost to make a batch of guacamole?

A batch of Cookie and Kate's guacamole, about 2 1/2 cups, cost $5.05 with avocados at 97 cents each, the national ad average in the USDA's October 2, 2026 produce report. With avocados at $1.41, the regular per-avocado price in a WebstaurantStore case, the same batch costs $6.79. Avocados are 77% to 83% of the bill.

How much should a pint of homemade guacamole sell for?

Sell a pint (16 ounces) of homemade guacamole for $12 to $19, or about 1.3 to 1.7 times what you charge for 8 ounces. The six small vendors we found selling pints asked $8 to $20.25 that day, and the middle two averaged $12. The pint costs you about $4.15 in ingredients and container at 97-cent avocados.

Can I sell homemade guacamole at a farmers market?

Only if your state allows foods that need refrigeration from a home kitchen, or if you make it in a licensed kitchen. Texas allows it after you register as a cottage food operation that sells TCS food, and Wyoming allows it under its Food Freedom Act. Arkansas's health department lists guacamole as not allowed from a home kitchen, and Michigan's cottage food law covers only foods that need no refrigeration.

How long does homemade guacamole last for selling?

If you follow a home recipe, plan on about 3 days of good color. Cookie and Kate's recipe says leftovers keep well in the fridge for about 3 days with onion on top and plastic wrap over the container. Glaser Organic Farms, a farm that sells guacamole, lists a refrigerated shelf life of 7 to 10 days for its tub. The FDA Food Code's outer limit for ready-to-eat TCS food held at 41°F in a restaurant or food shop is seven days, counting the day it was made, but a browned top rarely sells.

What is a good profit margin on guacamole?

In our example, a home cook in Texas who sells a $9 tub keeps $2.57 a tub after ingredients, booth fee, an allowance for unsold tubs, card fees and $20 an hour of pay. A vendor renting a $25 an hour kitchen keeps 86 cents a tub at $10 and loses 11 cents at $9. Selling every tub you make adds about $1.71 a tub in the rented kitchen example.

Related Reading

Six live guides cover the next questions a guacamole vendor runs into, from the rules on refrigerated food to setting up order cutoffs. Each one is written for a small vendor selling at a farmers market or from home, and each picks up where a section of this guide stops:

• TCS food list: TCS vs non-TCS foods: why foods that need a fridge are treated differently, with examples.
• How much to sell salsa for: jar sizes and prices for the dip that often shares a cooler with guacamole.
• How much to sell hummus for: the same math for another refrigerated dip, including kitchen rent.
• Can you sell homemade salsa?: the permission side of fresh and canned salsa.
• Finding and renting a commissary kitchen: what a licensed kitchen asks for before your first session.
• Taking pre-orders for your food business: how to set cutoffs so you only make what is sold.

Take This Week's Guacamole Orders Before You Buy Avocados

The biggest number in this guide is not the avocado price or the card fee. It is the tub that goes brown before anyone buys it. A pre-order page lets your regulars reserve Saturday's guacamole on Wednesday, so you buy the right number of avocados and fill only the tubs that are already paid for.

Here is the whole plan in three moves. Set your 8 ounce tub at $9 to $11, or at $10 or more if you rent a kitchen. Recheck that price any month avocados climb. Then take orders before you buy avocados, so the short color window works for you instead of against you.

Homegrown is $10 a month billed annually, with 0% commission and card processing of 2.9% plus 30 cents, paid by you. Your customers create an account to order the first time, and you choose the pickup days, places and lead time. Set up your guacamole pre-orders on Homegrown, add your 8 ounce tub and pint, and send the link to your regulars before your next market.