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

Hummus looks like one of the cheapest things you could sell. A bag of dried chickpeas costs $1.52 at Walmart, and a tub of Sabra sits next to it for under $4. So when a shopper picks up your 8 ounce container at the farmers market, you might wonder how anyone gets $10 for it.

They do, and they have reasons. Hummus has to be kept cold from the minute you make it, it only lasts about a week, and the tahini that makes it taste good is the most expensive thing in the bowl. In a state like Minnesota, where the cottage food law covers only shelf-stable food, a licensed commercial kitchen is usually the route, and that kitchen charges rent by the hour.

This guide works out a real price with numbers loaded on one day. It lists what nine hummus vendors charge right now, runs a well-known recipe through live grocery and restaurant-supply prices, adds kitchen rent from four real kitchens, and shows what each way of selling takes off a $10 tub. It also answers a question shoppers and vendors type into search: how much did Ithaca Hummus sell for?

How Much Should You Sell Hummus For?

Price an 8 ounce tub of handmade hummus at $8 to $12, which sits around the $10 median that six small vendors charged for 8 ounces on October 6, 2026, and the $10 median is 5.4 to 9.2 times the $1.09 to $1.84 of ingredients and packaging in that tub. A big multiple is normal here. The beans are cheap, but the cold storage, the kitchen time and the tubs you cannot sell after a week are not.

Before you set any price, check that you are allowed to sell hummus from where you plan to make it. Our guide to which foods count as TCS food under cottage food laws explains why cooked chickpeas need temperature control and what that changes for a home cook. This page is about the price, and the legal section below covers the four states we checked.

Swipe sideways to see every size and price.

Ingredient costs come from the Ottolenghi and Tamimi basic hummus recipe run through WebstaurantStore and Walmart prices that day, with one batch filling four 8 ounce tubs. Your label, kitchen rent, booth fee and time are not in these two columns; the sections below add them. Small vendors' prices were read on each vendor's own page and in the Homegrown catalog the same day.

Three things decide where you land inside that range:

• Where you make it. A home cook in Texas, Illinois or Wyoming pays no kitchen rent. A cook renting a commercial kitchen at $33 an hour carries about $3.30 of rent in every tub of a 40-tub session.
• What tahini you buy. Tahini is most of your ingredient cost, and a premium brand adds about 45 cents a tub.
• How many tubs you throw away. The FDA Food Code gives refrigerated, ready-to-eat food like hummus up to seven days at 41°F, so every unsold tub raises the cost of the ones you did sell.

What Do Small Hummus Vendors Charge Right Now?

Nine US hummus vendors, eight small makers and one packaged brand sold in grocery stores (Little Sesame), charged $7.49 to $13 a container on October 6, 2026, with a median of $10, and the six selling an 8 ounce tub also landed on a $10 median. By the ounce, the nine ranged from 57 cents to $1.63, with a median of 99 cents. Every price below was read off the vendor's own website that day. Eight of the nine were shown as available to order; Grove Ladder Farm's $13 tub showed Sold Out that day.

Slide left to see the price per ounce.

Read on each vendor's own product page on October 6, 2026. Locations are the ones each site states; no location means the page did not give one. Marla Bakery sells by the half pint, which is 8 fluid ounces, so we counted it as 8 ounces; without it, the five 8 ounce tubs still have a $10 median. This table is vendors' own websites. Homegrown's one hummus vendor, Cryptid Kitchen, charges $5 and $6 for 8 ounces and is covered in the catalog section below; counting it, the median of eight 8 ounce tubs is $8.95. Four other vendors were left out because their pages did not state a container size that day.

What the table tells you:

• The 8 ounce tub is the standard. Six of the nine sell 8 ounces, and $10 for 8 ounces is the most common handmade price we found.
• Big tubs are a deal for the buyer. Every container over 8 ounces came in under $0.85 an ounce, so the per-ounce price drops as the tub grows.
• Sprouted, organic and unusual recipes sit at the top. The two highest prices, $12 and $13, are an organic turmeric and dill hummus and a sprouted bean hummus with fermented vegetables.

If you sell in a smaller town, start near the low end of this list and raise the price once you have regulars. If you sell in a city market where organic produce goes for top dollar, $12 is not a stretch.

How Does Homemade Hummus Compare to Sabra and Store Brands?

A 10 ounce tub of Sabra Classic was $3.97 at Walmart on October 6, 2026, about 40 cents an ounce, while the nine vendors in the table above charged a median of 99 cents an ounce. So the median vendor charges about 2.5 times Sabra's price per ounce, and a $10 tub of 8 ounces works out to about 3.1 times. That gap is normal among the vendors we checked.

Swipe sideways for the per-ounce math.

Walmart prices come from Walmart.com search results at the default store on October 6, 2026. They change by store and week. One Sabra flavor, roasted red pepper, showed $1.84 that day; the $3.97 classic tub is used here as the standard tub. Ithaca was not listed at that store.

Here is how to use the comparison without letting it drag your price down:

1. Do not price against Sabra. A shopper buying your tub at a market is not choosing between you and the grocery store that morning. They want the one made a few miles away.
2. Use Ithaca as your floor, because it is the premium store brand price. At about $5.60 for 8 ounces, Ithaca is the price a shopper has already paid for good store hummus. Your handmade tub should sit above it.
3. Say what makes yours different. Fresh lemon, a named farm's chickpeas, a flavor no store sells. Those are the reasons a $10 tub feels fair.

The same pattern shows up in our salsa pricing guide, where handmade jars also sell for several times the grocery price per ounce. A refrigerated dip made in small batches simply costs more to make, keep cold and sell, and a fair price says so. Queso makes the same point with cheese: a pint costs about $3.35 in ingredients and tub but $12.21 per pint sold once rent, your time and a booth are counted, which is why our queso pricing guide lands on $12 to $14.

How Much Did Ithaca Hummus Sell For?

No sale price for Ithaca Hummus has been made public, while its hummus sells for around $7 for a 10 ounce tub in stores. We found no public announcement that Ithaca Hummus was sold, so there is no sale price to report. PitchBook's profile, which we read on October 6, 2026, lists Bush Brothers & Company as its parent with no date and no deal amount, but we found no press release or news story confirming a sale, and Cornell's business school still called Chris Kirby the founder and CEO of Ithaca Hummus in May 2026. The tub price comes from a July 2025 CNBC story, which reported that each 10 ounce Ithaca tub retails for around $7 and also said the company was on track for more than $50 million in revenue that year and had passed $150 million in lifetime sales.

The early numbers are the useful part for a small vendor, because Ithaca started where you are:

• 2013, a farmers market table. Founder Chris Kirby debuted his lemon garlic hummus at the Ithaca Farmers Market in 2013, according to Cornell's business school.
• A rented kitchen, not his home kitchen. Kirby told Forbes in 2025 that he rented a tiny kitchen for $250 a month and bought big pots, a stick blender, deli cups, a digital scale and ice cream scoops.
• 200 tubs a week by early 2014. The college paper The Ithacan reported in February 2014 that he made about 200 a week, portioned into 7.5 ounce deli cups, with each batch starting from 10 pounds of raw chickpeas.
• Priced above the big brands. By 2016 his hummus sold for about a dollar more than competing brands, Cornell reported, and fans paid it.
• Outside money came late. In 2017 the food manufacturer LiDestri, which was already making the hummus, took a 20% stake, according to Cornell.

The lesson for your price: Ithaca never tried to be the cheapest tub on the shelf. It charged more for fresh lemon and garlic, handed out samples, and let the taste make the case. That is the same playbook a farmers market vendor uses at a $10 price.

Can You Make Hummus at Home to Sell?

In some states, yes, but not under a traditional cottage food law. The FDA Food Code 2026 counts a heat-treated plant food, like cooked chickpeas, as time/temperature control for safety food, usually shortened to TCS food, unless its acidity or water activity tests low enough to keep germs from growing. States that only allow shelf-stable foods from a home kitchen leave hummus out. Of the four states we checked on October 6, 2026, Texas, Illinois and Wyoming allow hummus from a home kitchen under their own rules, and Minnesota does not.

Slide the table left for each state's rules.

Checked October 6, 2026 on each state's own site: the Texas Department of State Health Services cottage food page, the Illinois statute 410 ILCS 625/4 and the University of Illinois Extension 2024 Cottage Food Guide, Wyoming Statutes 11-49-102 and 11-49-103, and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture's cottage food guidance and training. Check your own state's page before your first sale, because these rules change.

If your state is like Minnesota, the practical answer is a licensed kitchen. That is how Ithaca started, with a $250 a month rental. The kitchen section below shows what today's hourly rent does to each tub.

What Does One Tub of Hummus Cost to Make?

One 8 ounce tub of tahini-rich hummus costs about $1.09 to make when you buy by the case from a restaurant supplier, or $1.84 when you shop at Walmart, tub and lid included, on prices loaded October 6, 2026. That is for the ingredients and the container only. Rent, your booth and your time come next.

We priced the basic hummus from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's cookbook *Jerusalem*, as printed on Serious Eats: 250 grams of dried chickpeas, 270 grams of light tahini, 4 tablespoons of lemon juice, 4 garlic cloves, 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 1 teaspoon of baking soda for cooking the beans, and 100 milliliters of ice water. The recipe says the beans cook up to about 600 grams. Add everything together and one batch weighs about 37.8 ounces, enough for four 8 ounce tubs with about 5.8 ounces left over for samples and what sticks to the bowl.

Scroll right to compare both buying levels.

Prices from Walmart.com (default store) and WebstaurantStore search pages on October 6, 2026. The olive oil drizzle is our addition; the recipe as printed has none. The garlic count and salt weight are our estimates for "4 cloves" and "1 1/2 teaspoons." Each cell is rounded to the cent, so the restaurant-supply column adds to $3.955 before rounding. Labels are not included.

A few notes that change these numbers in real life:

• Fresh lemon or bottled. Two fresh lemons cost $1.16 a batch, almost six times the bottled juice. Little Sesame, Glaser Organic Farms and Grove Ladder Farm list fresh lemon juice on their ingredient lists, and Ithaca describes its lemon dill flavor as made with cold pressed lemon juice.
• Canned chickpeas. A 15.5 ounce can of Great Value chickpeas was $0.92 on October 6, 2026, but part of that weight is canning liquid. Ithaca, for one, started by soaking and cooking 10 pounds of dried beans per batch.
• The leftover 5.8 ounces. If you sell it as a fifth, smaller tub instead of sampling it, your per-tub cost drops a little. Or keep it for tasting spoons, which the samples section below prices.

Your recipe will not match Ottolenghi's exactly. Many recipes use less tahini and more water or olive oil, which lowers the cost. Run your own amounts through the same prices and you will have your real number.

Why Does Tahini Set Your Hummus Price?

Tahini is 61% of the ingredient cost at grocery prices and 72% at restaurant-supply prices in the recipe above, so the jar you buy moves your cost more than anything else. Chickpeas, the main ingredient by weight, are only 13% at either level.

Here is what different tahini choices did to one batch on October 6, 2026:

• Krinos 16 ounce jar at Walmart, $6.47 (40 cents an ounce). $3.85 a batch, the grocery figure in the table.
• Haddar 15.9 ounce jar at Walmart, $5.32 (34 cents an ounce). About 66 cents less per batch than Krinos.
• Soom Premium 11 ounce jar at Walmart, $6.53 (59 cents an ounce). $1.80 more per batch than Krinos, or 45 cents more per tub.
• Ambrosia by the case at WebstaurantStore, $57.49 for twelve 16 ounce jars (30 cents an ounce). $2.85 a batch, the restaurant-supply figure.

Check your tahini cost every few months, and if it goes up by more than about 10 cents an ounce, rerun your cost per tub before you assume your price still works.

How Much Does a Rented Kitchen Add to Each Tub?

Kitchen rent added $1.50 to $3.30 to each tub in our example of a 4-hour session that makes 40 tubs, using rates posted by four shared kitchens on October 6, 2026. If you live in a state that allows hummus from home, this line is $0, which is the single biggest reason home cooks in Texas, Illinois and Wyoming can price lower.

Slide the table to compare kitchen rates.

Rates read on October 6, 2026, on three kitchens' own pages and The Kitchen Door listing for the Nashville kitchens. Capital Kitchens also asks for a $1,000,000 liability insurance certificate. The 4 hours and 40 tubs are an example; your own time will differ. Tampa Bay Kitchen's package is for one workstation and does not include sales tax.

What changes the rent per tub:

• Batch size. Rent is per hour, not per tub. Making 80 tubs in the same 4 hours halves the rent per tub, if your fridge space and your market can absorb them.
• Monthly minimums. A 12-hour minimum at $33 an hour is $396 a month whether you use it or not. Three 4-hour sessions a month use it exactly.
• Cold storage. Rockwood Market Hall rents cold storage separately at $75 a month per rack. Ask any kitchen before you sign, because hummus needs to sit cold between the kitchen and the market.

Our guide to finding and renting a commissary kitchen covers the questions to ask and the paperwork a kitchen will want from you. Read it before you price a rented-kitchen tub, because the deposit and insurance come before the first batch.

How Do You Price Hummus, Step by Step?

Add your ingredients, kitchen rent, booth fee, time and an allowance for unsold tubs, then check the total against the $8 to $12 that small vendors charge for 8 ounces. In our example, a vendor renting a $33 an hour kitchen who sells 32 of 40 tubs ends up with a true cost of $8.93 a tub, so $10 barely covers it. A home cook in Texas paying no rent lands near $5.74, so $10 leaves real room.

Here is the method, with the example numbers from this guide. The booth fee, the hours and your hourly pay are examples; put in your own. The example also leaves out labels, ice packs, gas to the market, insurance (Capital Kitchens asks for a $1,000,000 liability certificate) and your Homegrown plan, so add those per tub before you trust the last line.

• Cost one batch. Price your own recipe at today's prices and divide by the tubs it fills. In this guide, one batch is $3.96 at restaurant-supply prices, or 99 cents a tub, plus 10 cents for the tub and lid: $1.09.
• Add kitchen rent per tub. Divide one session's rent by the tubs you make in it. At $33 an hour for 4 hours and 40 tubs, that is $3.30. At Tampa Bay Kitchen's package rate it is $1.50. At home in a state that allows it, it is $0.
• Add your booth. Spread the booth fee over the tubs you expect to sell, not the tubs you make. A $30 fee over 32 sold tubs is 94 cents each. Use your market's real fee.
• Pay yourself. Four hours of cooking, blending, filling and labeling at $20 an hour is $80, or $2.50 for each of the 32 tubs you sell.
• Add an allowance for unsold tubs. If you usually sell 32 of 40, the ingredients and rent in the 8 you discard add $1.10 to each sold tub when you rent the kitchen and 46 cents at home. The next section shows the math.
• Total it and compare. Rented kitchen: $1.09 + $3.30 + $0.94 + $2.50 + $1.10 = $8.93. Home kitchen with grocery prices: $1.84 + $0 + $0.94 + $2.50 + $0.46 = $5.74.
• Check what is left after fees. A $10 tub sold through Homegrown pays 59 cents of card processing. That leaves 48 cents when you rent the kitchen and $3.67 at home, after you have already paid yourself $20 an hour.

The rented kitchen number is the one to watch. At 48 cents a tub, one slow market day wipes out your margin. If all 40 tubs sell, the same tub costs $7.14 and leaves $2.27, so selling out is worth $1.79 a tub. You have three ways to get there:

1. Make more per session. Eighty tubs in the same 4 hours cuts rent to $1.65 a tub.
2. Find cheaper hours. Off-peak rent at Rockwood Market Hall was $20 an hour against $25 at peak.
3. Sell before you make. Pre-orders cut the unsold tubs toward zero, which is worth $1.79 a tub in this example.

For the general method behind these steps, including how to price when you sell many different products, our guide to pricing food products for a farmers market walks through the cost-plus approach in more detail.

What Do Unsold Tubs Do to Your Real Cost?

Unsold hummus is a direct loss, because a refrigerated tub lasts about a week. The FDA Food Code 2026, the model rule book for restaurants and food shops, limits ready-to-eat TCS food held at 41°F to a maximum of seven days and counts the day you make it as Day 1. Glaser Organic Farms tells its customers to refrigerate its hummus and "enjoy within 7 days."

Here is what throwing away 8 of 40 tubs does, using this guide's numbers:

Swipe to see the cost of each discarded tub.

Figured from the cost and rent tables in this guide, prices of October 6, 2026. The totals use unrounded costs. This table counts only the ingredients and rent inside the discarded tubs; the next paragraph adds the booth and your time.

The waste does a second thing. Your $30 booth fee and your $80 of time now spread over 32 tubs instead of 40, which adds another 69 cents to each one. All in, 8 unsold tubs out of 40 cost $1.79 per sold tub in the rented kitchen example and $1.15 at home. Guacamole runs the same math on a shorter clock, about 3 days of good color instead of a week, and our guacamole pricing guide finds that 7 unsold tubs out of 35 add $1.07 to every rented-kitchen tub you do sell.

How vendors keep this number small:

• Make for the market you have. Count what you sold the last three weeks and make that many, not what you hope to sell.
• Sell the oldest tubs first. Put the earliest date at the front of the cooler so nothing hides at the back.
• Date every lid. Texas requires the date the food was made on the label of TCS cottage food, and a date on the lid helps you pull old stock before it passes the seven days the FDA Food Code allows shops and restaurants.
• Take orders first. A customer who ordered Wednesday for Saturday pickup is a tub you will not throw away.

Of these, taking orders first saves the most. The section on selling out instead of throwing hummus away, later in this guide, shows how to set that up without trading 30 text messages a week.

What Should 16 Ounce Tubs, Flavors and Party Platters Sell For?

Price a 16 ounce tub at about $15 when your 8 ounce tub is $10, a flavored tub at about $1 more than plain, and a party board by the number of guests. That 16 ounce price is 1.5 times the small tub, and a range of 1.5 to 2 times fits what small vendors charge. The 16 ounce tubs we found sold for $8 to $12, but Cryptid Kitchen prices its 8 ounce tubs at only $5 and $6, so copy its ratio, not its prices. On October 6, 2026, Cryptid Kitchen on Homegrown asked $5 for 8 ounces of plain hummus and $8 for 16, or 1.6 times, and $6 and $12 for its roasted red pepper version, or 2 times.

A bigger tub costs you less per ounce to make. At restaurant-supply prices, 16 ounces is $2.09 with the tub against $1.09 for 8 ounces, because you only buy one container. Pass some of that saving on and the big tub sells itself to families.

How to set each one:

• 16 ounce tub. $15 if your 8 ounce is $10. Little Sesame sells a 16 ounce tub for $10, or 63 cents an ounce, which shows how much of a deal a big tub can look like next to an 8 ounce one.
• Flavors. Roasted red pepper, beet, herb, jalapeño. Add the cost of the add-in, then add about $1. Cryptid Kitchen charges exactly $1 more for its red pepper 8 ounce tub.
• Sampler packs. Three 8 ounce flavors at $27 to $28 instead of $30 rewards the shopper for buying three.
• Party boards. From Scratch on Homegrown lists a Garden Graze Board of vegetables with classic hummus, beet hummus and ranch at $50 for 4 to 6 guests, $75 for 8 to 10, and $100 for 12 to 16. Price boards per guest, and count the vegetables and your arranging time.

A board is a different product from a tub. You make it to order, so it carries almost no leftover risk, and it reaches buyers who would never buy a tub of hummus at a market.

How Many Free Samples Can You Afford?

At this guide's costs, one ounce of hummus costs about 10 cents at restaurant-supply prices and 17 cents at grocery prices, so 40 half-ounce tasting spoons cost $2.10 to $3.32 a market day. That is a fifth to a third of one tub's price, and for a food people buy on taste it is money well spent.

Chris Kirby built Ithaca on samples. He told Forbes that he set up a table at the farmers market every weekend and handed out tons of free samples, and that people who tried it bought multiple containers.

A simple sample plan:

1. Use the leftover from each batch. The 5.8 ounces left over from every four-tub batch in this guide is about a dozen half-ounce tastes.
2. Sample one flavor at a time. Put out your most popular flavor and one new one, not all six.
3. Use crackers or vegetable sticks, not double-dip bowls. Single-use spoons or pre-portioned cups keep the table clean.
4. Keep the sample tub cold too. A sample that sits in the sun for three hours is a food safety problem, not a sales tool.

Before you sample, ask your market manager and your health department what they require, since sampling rules are set locally. Our farmers market sampling tips cover table setup, portion size and how to turn a taste into a sale.

What Do Selling Fees Take Off a $10 Tub of Hummus?

Selling fees take 41 cents to $1.64 off a $10 tub, depending on where and how the sale happens, checked on each platform's own pricing page the same day. The difference between the rows is mostly whether the card is in your hand at the market and who pays the platform's fee.

Scroll sideways to see every fee column.

Every fee read off the platform's own page on October 6, 2026: findhomegrown.com/signup, hotplate.com/pricing, squareup.com/us/en/pricing and shopify.com/pricing. Figured on a $10 price with no tax or tip and rounded to the cent. If a platform figures 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. Shopify Basic charges 3.5% + 30¢ on premium cards online, or 65 cents on a $10 tub.

On a refrigerated product, the fee is not the biggest cost of selling online. The biggest saving from online orders is the tubs you do not throw away. A few cents of difference in card processing, like Square online's 63 cents against Homegrown's 59, matters much less than knowing on Thursday that 32 people want hummus on Saturday.

How Do You Sell Out Instead of Throwing Hummus Away?

Take orders before you make the hummus, so the batch size matches what people already paid for. With a one-week shelf life, the 8 tubs you throw away out of 40 cost $1.79 for every tub you sold in our rented kitchen example, which is more than any selling fee in the table above.

Homegrown is $10 per month billed annually with no percentage fees beyond standard payment processing, which on a $10 tub is 59 cents. Your regulars order from your storefront during the week, pay when they order, and pick up at your market or another spot you choose. Here is what fits hummus in particular:

• A quantity on every listing. Set 40 tubs for Saturday, and the count updates on its own as orders come in, with an alert when you run low.
• Sizes and flavors on one listing. An 8 ounce and a 16 ounce tub, or classic and red pepper, can each carry its own price under one product.
• Ingredients and allergens on every listing. Tahini is sesame, one of the nine major food allergens, and you can list it so a shopper sees it before ordering.
• More than one pickup spot. Your Saturday market, a Wednesday market and your porch can all sit under one storefront.
• A customer list that stays yours. Names, emails and order history belong to you, and customers can message you from your storefront.

How it compares to what hummus vendors usually try first. Hotplate is built for food vendors who take pre-orders and has no monthly plan, but by default it adds 5% plus 55 cents to your customer's total, so a $10 tub checks out at $11.05, and covering that fee yourself costs $1.64 a tub. Square is the cheapest option at your table at 41 cents a tub, and on its free plan an online order for the same tub pays 63 cents in processing. Shopify is built for full online stores and shipping, at $29 a month billed yearly before apps, but Illinois's cottage food law does not allow shipping TCS food at all, and shipping a refrigerated tub anywhere means cold packs and fast delivery.

What Homegrown does not do, said plainly. Your customer creates a Homegrown account to place a first order, which is one extra step. There is no drop or countdown release feature, so a vendor who sells hummus in timed weekly drops will find that on Hotplate, not here. Homegrown does not make your kitchen legal or keep your hummus cold; that is still your health department and your cooler. Your storefront is listed on the marketplace, but plan on most orders coming from people you send to your own link. And the 2.9% plus 30 cents of card processing is paid by you, with nothing passed on to the customer.

If you are tired of guessing how many tubs to make, set up a Homegrown storefront for your hummus and put the link on your table sign and your lids. The 7-day trial means you are not charged until day 8, which is enough time to list your flavors and take a first round of orders. Our guide to taking pre-orders for your food business covers order cutoffs and pickup windows.

Does Anyone Sell Hummus on Homegrown Yet?

One vendor, Cryptid Kitchen, listed hummus on Homegrown on October 6, 2026, so a hummus vendor who joins would have very little competition on the marketplace. Its two hummus listings are priced well under the small vendors in our table.

What that means for your price:

• Your hummus would not be compared to dozens of others. The Homegrown catalog we pulled on October 6, 2026 had two hummus listings, so a new hummus vendor would not be one of dozens.
• A $5 tub is a choice, not the market rate. Cryptid Kitchen sells hummus next to its cakes, pizzas and stews. If hummus is your main product, the $10 median from our nine-vendor table is the better guide.
• Boards sell hummus to people who would not buy a tub. From Scratch's $50 to $100 boards put hummus in front of party hosts.

If you already sell at a market and want your regulars to order hummus by Thursday, start a Homegrown storefront and list your sizes and flavors. Customers order ahead and pick up at your next market, so you make what has already sold.

What Has to Be on a Hummus Label?

In Texas, a hummus label needs seven things, one of which can go on the receipt instead: your business name, your address or a registration number, the name of the product, any major allergens such as sesame, the statement "THIS PRODUCT WAS PRODUCED IN A PRIVATE RESIDENCE THAT IS NOT SUBJECT TO GOVERNMENTAL LICENSING OR INSPECTION.", the date it was made, and a safe handling statement, according to the Texas health department's cottage food page, read October 6, 2026. Other states have their own lists, so check yours.

The Texas safe handling statement for TCS cottage food is spelled out word for word and must appear on the label or on an invoice or receipt in at least 12-point type: "SAFE HANDLING INSTRUCTIONS: To prevent illness from bacteria, keep this food refrigerated or frozen until the food is prepared for consumption."

Things to put on every hummus label, whatever your state:

• Sesame. Tahini is ground sesame. The FDA says sesame became the 9th major food allergen recognized in the United States, effective January 1, 2023.
• A full ingredient list. Even where only allergens are required, as on the Texas list, listing chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic, salt, olive oil and any add-ins from most to least by weight answers shoppers' questions before they ask.
• A make date or use-by date. Even where it is not required, it helps your customers and helps you rotate stock.
• "Keep refrigerated." A shopper who leaves your tub in a hot car for an afternoon needs to know that matters.

Our guide to the big 9 allergens on a cottage food label shows how to list sesame and the other eight clearly. Budget for labels in your cost per tub; they were not included in the ingredient table above.

What Pricing Mistakes Do New Hummus Vendors Make?

The most expensive mistake is pricing against the grocery store's $3.97 tub of Sabra. A vendor who prices at $5 because Sabra is that cheap for 10 ounces leaves about $5 a tub on the table compared with the $10 median, and still carries the kitchen rent and the unsold tubs that Sabra does not.

The others that come up again and again:

• Leaving kitchen rent out of the cost. At $33 an hour and 40 tubs, rent is $3.30 a tub, three times the ingredients.
• Not counting the tubs that expire. Eight unsold of 40 adds $1.79 to every sold tub in a rented kitchen, once the wasted ingredients, rent, booth and time are counted.
• Pricing flavors the same as classic. Roasted peppers, beets and fresh herbs cost money and time. Cryptid Kitchen charges $1 more for its red pepper tub.
• Not rechecking tahini. It is the largest share of your ingredient bill, so a price change there moves your whole cost.
• Too many samples, served warm. Forty half-ounce tastes cost about $2 to $3.30. A full tub left open in the sun all morning is a food safety risk you cannot price.
• Forgetting that a customer fee shows. A $10 tub that reads $11.05 at checkout is a different price to the shopper, even if your cut is the same.

If you sell another refrigerated food next to your hummus, our guide to pricing chicken salad works through the same problem for a TCS food sold by the container: kitchen rent, cold storage and a short shelf life.

Frequently Asked Questions

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

Charge $8 to $12 for an 8 ounce container of handmade hummus. Six small vendors selling 8 ounce tubs charged $7.49 to $13 when we checked on October 6, 2026, and the median was $10. Start near $10 if you rent a kitchen, because rent and unsold tubs can push your true cost above $8.

How much does it cost to make homemade hummus?

Buying by the case from a restaurant supplier, a tahini-rich recipe costs about $1.09 per 8 ounce tub with the tub and lid, and buying at the grocery store it costs about $1.84, on prices checked October 6, 2026. Tahini is the biggest single cost, at roughly two thirds of the ingredients. Kitchen rent, if you need it, adds about $1.50 to $3.30 a tub.

Can I sell homemade hummus at a farmers market?

It depends on your state, because hummus is a TCS food that has to stay cold. Texas, Illinois and Wyoming allow it from a home kitchen under their own rules, checked October 6, 2026, while Minnesota does not and points you to a licensed kitchen. Ask your market manager what they need from a vendor selling refrigerated food, and verify your state's current rules.

How long does homemade hummus last for selling?

Plan on about a week. The FDA Food Code 2026 limits ready-to-eat TCS food kept at 41°F to seven days in food shops and restaurants, counting the day it was made as Day 1. Make only what you can sell inside that week, and date every lid.

What is a good profit margin on hummus?

At a $10 price, a home cook in Texas paying no rent who sells 32 of 40 tubs keeps about $3.67 a tub after ingredients, a $30 booth fee, $20 an hour of labor, the unsold tubs and Homegrown's 59 cents of card processing, or $4.82 if all 40 sell. A vendor renting a kitchen at $33 an hour keeps about 48 cents on the same tub, or $2.27 if all 40 sell. Making more tubs per kitchen session is the fastest way to raise the margin on hummus.

How much did Ithaca Hummus sell for?

No sale price for Ithaca Hummus has been made public. We found no public announcement that the company was sold. PitchBook's profile, read October 6, 2026, lists Bush Brothers & Company as its parent with no date and no deal amount, but we found no press release or news story confirming a sale. Ithaca's hummus itself retails for around $7 a tub, 10 ounces, according to CNBC in July 2025.

Related Reading

These five guides answer the questions that come right before and right after setting a hummus price. Each one is about selling a refrigerated or prepared food, and each is worth reading before your first batch if you have not sold a food that needs a cooler before.

• TCS foods explained: what time and temperature control for safety means, which foods count, and which states allow them from a home kitchen.
• How to find and rent a commissary kitchen: where to look, what to ask and what a kitchen will want from you before your first batch.
• How much to sell salsa for: the other dip on most market tables, priced jar by jar, with its own fee table.
• How much to sell chicken salad for: pricing a refrigerated food sold by the container, with kitchen rent counted.
• Texas cottage food law: the full Texas rules, including how to register to sell TCS food like hummus from home.

Give Your Hummus Regulars One Link to Order From

A $10 price only works if your tubs sell before Day 7. Once you have settled on $10 for an 8 ounce tub, $15 for a 16 ounce and $1 more for a flavor, put them where your regulars can order on Wednesday and pick up on Saturday.

A Homegrown storefront costs $10 a month billed annually, or $12.50 billed monthly, with 0% commission and 2.9% plus 30 cents of card processing paid by you. You list each size and flavor with a quantity, set a pickup spot at your market or your porch, and share one link on your table sign and your lids. Your customers create an account the first time they order. There are no drops, and the marketplace listing is a bonus, not a promise of traffic, so plan on most orders coming from people you send to your link.

When your first batch is ready to price, build your hummus storefront on Homegrown. You are not charged until day 8 of the trial.