Not the booth fee. That is the answer most makers carry around, and it is the reason a market that looked like a good day turns out not to have been one.
Every dollar that crosses your table arrives with money already spent on it. The materials and packaging in the piece are gone whether you sell it for $38 or $58. If the customer taps a card, the processor takes a percentage and a fixed few cents. What is left over — the contribution — is the only part that can go toward the booth.
So the question is not "what does the booth cost?" but "how many dollars of sales does it take to produce that much contribution?"
Booth or stall fee, the application or jury fee (usually non-refundable, and paid whether or not you got in — so it belongs to the show you did get into), round-trip mileage, lodging if it is a long haul, parking and tolls, and a share of what your tent, tables, racks, and lights cost spread over the events you expect to use them for.
| Booth fee | $250.00 |
|---|---|
| Application/jury fee | $25.00 |
| Mileage, 90 mi @ $0.67 | $60.30 |
| Parking & tolls | $15.00 |
| Tent & display, per event | $20.00 |
| Fixed cost of the day | $370.30 |
Subtract your materials-and-packaging percentage, then your card cost. The card cost has two parts and the second one surprises people: the percentage is easy, but the fixed fee per transaction only becomes a rate once you divide it by your average order value.
| Materials & packaging | 30.0c |
|---|---|
| Card percentage, 2.6% on 80% of sales | 2.1c |
| Card fixed fee, 10c per sale on a $38 average | 0.2c |
| Kept from each dollar | 67.7c |
That last line is where a sticker table and a print table part company. Ten cents on a $6 sale is 1.7% of it; the same ten cents on an $80 sale is 0.1%. A processor's headline "2.6% + 10c" hides that difference completely.
$370.30 of fixed cost, at 67.7c kept per dollar, needs $546.90 of sales to break even — about 15 orders at a $38 average. Not $370, and not 10 orders.
Breaking even means the day paid for itself and paid you nothing. Count the hours honestly — making and packing stock for the show, the drive both ways, load-in and teardown, and the hours the booth is open — and put your own number on them. Twenty-six hours at $25 is $650 more that the day has to produce, which moves break-even to about $1,507.
Those two figures answer different questions, and both are worth knowing. The first says whether you lost money. The second says whether you should have gone.
Run it on your own market. The craft fair booth calculator does the arithmetic above from your fees, mileage, materials percentage, average order, and hours — and adds the number an application actually turns on: the most a booth could cost and still clear your hourly rate. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
This is the correction that changes the most minds, and it is the one that separates a maker's break-even from a caterer's.
A caterer who preps for 150 and serves 90 throws food away: the over-prep is a real loss on that booking. A maker who brings 60 candles and sells 22 drives home with 38 candles. They cost what they cost, but they are still inventory — they sell at the next market, or online, or in December. Charging the whole table's materials against one weekend makes every event look like a disaster until the season is over.
So the materials that belong in one event's arithmetic are the materials in what actually sold. That is why the calculator takes materials as a percentage of retail rather than as a lump, and why the stock figure you enter is used only to express the break-even as a sell-through percentage: what share of the table has to move. If that percentage comes out above 100, the event cannot cover its booth even on a sellout, and the fix is a fuller table or a different show.
Once each show is on the same footing, the comparison that matters is not which one sold most — it is which one paid your hours best. A $900 farmers market four miles away with a $40 stall and eight committed hours can beat a $2,000 juried festival with a $600 booth, a hotel, and thirty hours. Run both and compare the hourly line.
The same maker usually sells the same work online between markets. The Etsy profit calculator prices one listing after Etsy's own fees, and the where-to-sell calculator puts one item through every channel at once — useful for the stock that comes home.
More than the booth fee, and usually by a wide margin. Add up everything paid before a single sale — booth fee, application or jury fee, mileage, lodging, parking, and a share of the tent — then work out what you keep from each dollar of sales after materials and card processing. Divide the first by the second. On a $250 booth with a $25 jury fee, 90 miles of driving, 30% materials and a typical card mix, $370.30 of fixed cost at 67.7c kept per dollar needs $546.90 of sales, not $370.
No. It is inventory, not a loss. A caterer who over-preps throws food away, but a maker who brings 60 candles and sells 22 drives home with 38 candles and sells them at the next market or online. The materials that belong in one event's arithmetic are the materials in what actually sold. Charging a whole table against one weekend makes every event look like a disaster until the season is over, and it is the most common reason makers stop applying to shows that were in fact working.
Breaking even means the day paid for itself and paid you nothing. Count the hours honestly — making and packing stock, the drive both ways, load-in and teardown, and the hours the booth is open — and put your own number on them. Twenty-six hours at $25 is $650 the day also has to produce, which moves the bar from $546.90 to about $1,507. Both figures are worth knowing: the first says whether you lost money, the second says whether you should have gone.