Wholesale prices
How much does bacon cost wholesale?
Bacon is the one item on this list where the per-pound price is the wrong number to negotiate. It is portioned by the slice, so the price that matters is cost per slice — and slice count varies by more than the price does. Get the count, do the division, and the cheap case is frequently the expensive one.
What this page is and is not
We do not have wholesale quote data. Nobody publishes a national wholesale price for bacon that would mean anything on your invoice, and we are not going to invent one. The figure below is a retail-level US city average from the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the same series behind our food cost index. Use it as a direction and a sanity check, never as a quote. The rest of this page is the part that is actually worth your time: how to read the quote you already have.
Where the tracked number sits
September 2026 · retail, US city average
$6.58
per lb
- 3 months
- −3.5%
- 12 months
- −7.5%
Your delivered price will not be this number. It will be a different number, in a different pack, at a different point in the chain, in your region — and that is fine, because the useful question is not does my price match a national average. It is did my price move the way the market moved. A quote that rose in a quarter when the tracked series fell −3.5% is a conversation you can have with evidence in your hand.
For what the last twelve months did to specific dishes, the bacon price page runs the per-plate arithmetic off this same series.
The packs you are actually quoted on
A quote arrives as a case price. Nothing is comparable until it is converted — to another vendor, to last quarter, or to the series above. The right-hand column is that conversion done at the retail-level average, so it is a reference point with the arithmetic shown, not a price anyone should expect to pay.
| Pack | In tracked units | At the retail-level average |
|---|---|---|
Case — 15 lb layflat, sliced The foodservice default, quoted with a slice count — typically expressed as slices per pound, e.g. 14–18 or 18–22. | 15 × lb | $98.76 |
Slab — unsliced Cheapest per pound, and it hands you the thickness decision plus the labour of slicing. Worth it only where the thickness is part of the dish. | — | not comparable |
Pre-cooked slices — case by count Far higher per pound and there is no cook loss, no grease handling and no line labour. Compare on cost per finished slice or the comparison is meaningless. | — | not comparable |
What drives the spread
Four things separate any published average from the number on your invoice. Knowing which one a rep is moving is most of the skill.
Volume
Modest. Bacon's price is set upstream by the belly market far more than by how many cases you take, so a volume negotiation on bacon usually buys less than a spec negotiation does.
Region
Processor proximity and, more than most items, the cure-and-smoke house doing the work. Regional smokehouses price differently from national brands and the product is genuinely different.
Grade & spec
Slice count is the price. A higher count means thinner slices, more slices per pound, and a lower cost per slice — at the cost of a thinner-looking plate. Then: belly thickness, cure (dry or wet), smoke (hardwood, applewood, liquid), sugar level, and whether it is centre-cut.
Vendor
Broadline house brands sit against branded and regional smokehouse product at a real quality spread. This is a menu decision as much as a purchasing one — on a BLT the bacon is the dish.
The public benchmark
USDA Agricultural Marketing Service publishes daily pork carcass cutout and pork belly reports; bellies are the traded item that sets bacon's cost long before it reaches a distributor's price list: ams.usda.gov/market-news.
We name these rather than restate them. A market level quoted from memory is a fabricated statistic, and the point of a public benchmark is that you can go and read today's.
What to ask for
- Slices per pound, as a range, on every quote. This is the single most useful thing you can put on the sheet.
- Delivered price per pound and the case weight.
- Cure and smoke, and whether the item is centre-cut.
How to tell whether your quote is reasonable
- 1Price per pound ÷ slices per pound = cost per slice. Do it for every quote. An 18–22 count at a higher per-pound price routinely beats a 14–18 count at a lower one, and no invoice will ever tell you that.
- 2Then apply cook loss. Bacon loses more weight in the pan than anything else a kitchen buys; the bacon price page works the raw-to-plated gap through.
- 3Decide the slice count from the plate, not the spreadsheet. Three thin slices and two thick ones can cost the same and land very differently in front of a guest.
Red flags
- A slice count that changed on the same item code — the plate gets visibly thinner or the cost per slice quietly rises, and nothing on the invoice moved.
- "Bacon" quoted without a count at all.
- Pre-cooked compared against raw on a per-pound basis. They are not the same product and the comparison is arithmetic nonsense.
Terms on this page
Yield percentage
The share of a purchased ingredient that survives trimming, peeling and cooking to reach the plate.
Plate cost
The total ingredient cost of one served portion, garnish and sides included.
Edible portion vs. as-purchased
AP is what you paid the supplier; EP is what the usable part actually costs after loss.
A good quote still gets worse without anyone deciding to.
The negotiation is the easy part. What costs money is the eleven months afterwards, when the case weight drifts, the lean point changes, the slice count moves and every recipe built on the old number keeps quietly reporting the old cost. Marji reads the invoice, recosts every dish the ingredient touches, and tells you which menu price stopped working.
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