Peanuts and Cost Accounting
A problem faced by a Restaurateur (Joe) as revealed by his Accountant-Efficiency Expert (Eff. Ex.)
EFF. EX. Joe, you said you put in these peanuts because some people ask for them, but do you realize what this rack of peanuts is costing you?
JOE It ain 't gonna cost. 'Sgonna be a profit. Sure, I hadda pay $25 for a fancy rack to holda bags, but the peanuts cost 6 cents and I sell 'em for 10 cents. Figger I sell 50 bags a week to start. It 'll take 12 ½ weeks to cover the cost of the rack. After that, I gotta clear profit of 4 cents a bag. The more I sell, the more I make.
EFF. EX. That is an antiquated and completely unrealistic approach, Joe. Fortunately, modern accounting procedures permit a
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Decrease the square foot value of your counter. For example, if you can cut your expenses 50%, that will reduce the amount allocated to peanuts from $1,563 down to $781.50 per year, reducing the cost to 35 cents per bag.
JOE (Slowly) That 's better.
EFF. EX. Much, much better. However, even then you would lose 26 cents per bag if you charge only 10 cents. Therefore, you must also raise your selling price. If you want a net profit of 4 cents per bag, you would have to charge 40 cents.
JOE (Flabbergasted) You mean after I cut operating costs 50%, I still gotta charge 40 cents for a 10 cent bag of peanuts? Nobody 's that nuts about nuts. Who 'd buy 'em?
EFF. EX. That 's a secondary consideration. The point is at 40 cents, you 'd be selling at a price based upon a true and proper evaluation of your then reduced costs.
JOE (Eagerly) Look! I got a better idea. Why don 't I just throw the nuts out -- put 'em in a trash can?
EFF. EX. Can you afford it?
JOE Sure. All I got is about 50 bags of peanuts -- cost about three bucks -- so I lose $25 on the rack, but I 'm outa this nutsy business and no more grief.
EFF. EX. (Shaking head) Joe, it isn 't quite that simple. You are in the peanut business! The minute you throw those peanuts out, you are adding $1,563 of annual overhead to the rest of your operation. Joe, be realistic -- can you afford to do that?
JOE (Completely crushed) It 'sa unbelievable! Last week, I was gonna make money. Now, I 'm in a trouble --
Jameson Family Farms (JFF), a family owned business, grows, processes and packages a range of fruits and vegetables, but primarily specializes in growing and selling peanuts. The company has a niche for selling their particular salted and unsalted peanuts to grocery stores and baseball stadiums in the southeastern region of the US. The product offerings have been stable over the last five years, but the company began internet sales in 2010, which increased sales by about $19 million in 2010 over 2009. The commodity business for peanuts, however, is very competitive and seven to eight major companies vie for US sales. JFF’s has annual audits for lending
In this analysis, we included the overhead expense for 1972-1977 because as the project begins to gain a foothold in the market it will acquire a larger market share and will become a larger portion of General Foods’ overall dessert sales. Also, the agglomerator and excess capacity was charged
The food will be promoted via newspapers and will offer a coupon for $0.40 off for the first can purchased—and the retailer will receive the regular margin and be reimbursed for redeemed coupons by Cats Gone Wild. Past experience indicates that for every 5 cans sold during the introductory year, one coupon will be redeemed. The cost for the newspaper advertising campaign will be $500,000 in addition to coupon redemption reimbursements. Other fixed overhead costs are expected to be $180,000 per year.
Imagine that you have decided to open a small ice cream stand on campus called "Ice-Campusades." You are very excited because you love ice cream (delicious!) and this is a fun way for you to apply your business and economics skills! Here is the first month's scenario--you order the same number (and the same variety) of ice creams each day from the ice cream suppliers, and your ice creams are always marked at $1.50 each. However, you notice that there are days when ice creams remain unsold but other days when there are not enough ice creams for the number of customers.
However, there are several factors for the company to choose its pricing strategy. In this case, it may be better if the company choose to sell its product at $21.50 instead of $15.50. This is due to the fact that price-cutting appears to be not a good strategy in this industry. If every player in the same industry starts to lower the price of their products, every company will end up having the low price, which in turns lead to a low profit margin. Moreover, referring to the calculation in a below table, it also implies that if the price is lower than $12, sales will not be able to cover the variable cost incurred, thus it will bring about a loss in net profit.
The above graph suggests that volume based computation of overhead costs does not reflect the real overhead costs based on actual production per product line (computed maximum in excess over actual). On the other hand, if we follow the allocation of overhead costs based on prime costs as illustrated in Exhibit 2 of the case, we need to consider other quantitative factors: 1. No data is available to determine the amount of raw materials used in producing each of the products. While we can assume that the production of small, colored glass ornaments uses fewer raw materials (e.g. glass) than large, colored glass ornaments, the amount of glass used to produce specialty ornaments cannot be derived from the facts of the case. 2. There is also no data available to determine the number of direct labor hours consumed for producing each product type, although evidently, specialty ornaments use more direct labor hours. Based on the above considerations, we deem it inaccurate to base overhead on prime costs, a common practice in traditional costing. In addition,
“the extra produce costs school districts $5.4 million a day, with $3.8 million of that being tossed in the trash, according to national estimates based on a 2013 study of 15 Utah schools by researchers with Cornell University and Brigham Young University” (Watanabe).
When price is $20.6, the quantity is 1,242,425 and profit is $101, we come near to break even point.
On the other hand, the marketing department allocation cost of 0.54 is not reasonable too because they want to use the same amount as for the old product. The allocated fixed expenses for the new product should be not more than a dollar and not less than 0.70 cent per 1 kg of the complete meal.
rising (Raab et al., 2009; Annaraud et al., 2008). Pavesic (1985) has initiated research in pricing and cost accounting for restaurants, introducing the concept of profit factor
Jointly funding the U.S. Peanut Resources and Efficiency Measures Report conducted by the independent research firm IHS Global Insight, which found major potential improvements in farming practices among U.S. peanut farmers as they are its major suppliers . Dairy ingredients
To estimate variable costs, Tables F and I are needed. Table F shows the cost of goods sold averages 77.1% of sales (variable cost); Table I shows an average wholesale price for the seven competing brands of about $3.16 per six pack (about one gallon).
The USDA claims that each year, 25.9 million tons of America’s food is thrown away, the equivalent to a quarter of the total amount produced. Nationally, the wasted food is a damaging financial setback, amounting to $1 billion just to get rid of during a time of ascending food prices, nonetheless (Oliver, 2007). Food waste has skyrocketed since 1970 at an astonishing 50% increase rate, yet according to the FAO, one-sixth of America doesn’t get enough to eat.
The price is set based on the production cost and the margin that the company desire. According to Ms Chan, the margin of one package of snacks that sell in the store is around 20%. Therefore, if a snack is selling at RM 10, they only have RM 2 as their net profit.