Booth fee math: when a show is worth the table
Every vendor has the story: the juried show with the $175 booth fee, the 6 a.m. load-in, and the $140 Saturday. Losing a day happens to everyone. Booking the same show again next year — because by then the memory has softened into "it wasn't that bad" — is the leak. The fix is one column of arithmetic: sales minus the fee it cost to be there, per day, written down while it's still true.
Net of fee is the only fair way to compare shows
A $1,240 festival day with a $250 booth fee and a $460 farmers-market Saturday at $35 are closer than they look — $990 against $425, before the festival's extra load-in hours. Logging every day out with its sales and its fee builds the only calendar-picker that works: a season of honest nets, best day and worst day named. One losing day is information; the same show losing twice is a decision.
| Day out | Sales | Booth fee | Net of fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spring Craft Festival — day 1 | $1,240 | $250 | $990 |
| Riverside Farmers Market | $505 | $35 | $470 |
| Lakeside Art Walk | $140 | $175 | −$35 — skip it? |
Materials % is not your margin
The other half of a market season is the table itself, and the honest way to price it starts with a number craft pricing folklore gets backwards: your materials share of price. Cost each supply pack once — pours per wax slab, bars per soap pail, labels per sheet — build each product from its lines, and hold materials under a target share (a quarter of price is a common ceiling). But say the quiet part on the sheet: materials % is not margin. The other three-quarters isn't profit — it's your bench hours, your table hours, the booth fees, and the fuel. Keeping materials in line is what leaves room to pay for those; pricing that skips the hours is a hobby with inventory.
The product costing, the booth-fee log, and the honest season
The Farmers Market & Craft Show Vendor Kit runs both halves live: materials costed per unit through 120 cost lines with a materials-% target and over-target reds, a market log netting every day against its fee — the show to skip gets named — and an expense log closing the honest cash. Excel & Google Sheets, pure formulas.
The season is a portfolio
Run the log for one full season and the calendar mostly picks itself: the weekly market that reliably nets $400, the two festivals that carry the summer, the art walk that doesn't get a third chance. One boundary to keep the sheet honest: it's pricing and record keeping, not business or legal advice — cottage-food rules, product labeling, and sales-tax permits vary by state and are your own homework.