What I Charge for a Sourdough Workshop and Why

I charge $1,000 for a sourdough workshop. Flat fee, plus travel if it is out of town.

I am going to show you exactly how I got to that number, because the number itself is not the useful part. The useful part is the working, and the working is what you will need when you set your own price for whatever it is you teach.

And if $1,000 made you flinch, good. Stay with me, because the flinch is the thing this post is actually about.

What the fee covers

A sourdough workshop is two hours in the room. It is nowhere near two hours of work.

The preparation takes about eight hours spread over two or three days, because sourdough cannot be faked on the day. To show a room what dough looks like at every stage, I have to start different doughs on different days and have all of them land at the right moment. Eight sample loaves, baked the night before. A dough mixed on the morning so it is ready to shape live.

Then there is packing the car, setting up the venue, two hours of teaching, answering questions, packing down, and driving home. All up, one workshop is about twelve and a half hours of my time.

At $1,000, after materials, that is roughly $74 an hour. That is a fair rate for skilled work. It is not a windfall.

Why not just charge less?

Because I did the maths on what everyone else charges, and it changed my mind about what this is worth.

Sourdough classes in Australia are priced per person, and the going rates are startling if you have never looked. The cheapest comparable class I could find, a demonstration format in a country hall, charges $80 a head. City workshops run $140 to $240 a person, and a Sydney class charges over $300 a head.

Now run that against mine. My workshops regularly draw thirty or forty people. At the cheapest rate in the country, forty seats is $3,200 worth of workshop. At city prices it is far more.

I charge a flat $1,000 for the lot. Whoever books me is getting the cheapest sourdough education in Australia by a wide margin, and I am still being paid properly for a week of work. Both of those things are true at once, and that is what a good price looks like.

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Why a flat fee and not per person

Most workshop teachers sell tickets. I do not, and it is a deliberate choice.

With a flat fee, the organisation booking me carries the risk. They book the hall, they fill the seats, they handle the money. I turn up and teach. If six people come or forty people come, I am paid the same, and I can plan my week around a number I already know.

Ticketed events pay more when they work. They also mean marketing, chasing payments, and the possibility of cancelling a workshop that did not fill. I have six kids and about six working hours a week. Guaranteed and simple beats bigger and uncertain, every time, for the life I actually have.

Your answer might be different, and that is fine. Just choose it on purpose.

Not every workshop costs the same

My other workshops are cheaper than sourdough, and the reason is a principle worth stealing: price by preparation, not by the hour in the room.

A sourdough workshop needs a week of baking behind it. A preserving or soap workshop needs a fraction of that, so it costs less. Same teacher, same room, different week beforehand.

When you price your own workshop, count everything from the first shopping trip to walking back in your own front door. That number of hours is what the fee has to cover. The two hours out the front is the smallest part of it.

Travel is not free, so do not give it away

I am in Kalgoorlie-Boulder, and out here everything is a long way from everything. So travel is charged on top: $1.20 per kilometre, return, and if the distance means staying overnight, accommodation is part of the booking.

Write that into your quote from the very first one. Distance is a real cost in regional Australia, in fuel and in hours you are away from your family, and a client who baulks at paying it was going to be difficult about everything else too.

Saying the number out loud

Here is the part nobody warns you about. Working out the number is easy. Saying it is the hard bit.

The first time you quote a real price for something you have always done for free, it feels like you are getting away with something. You will want to soften it, apologise for it, explain it three different ways, or knock a hundred off before they have even answered.

Do not. Say the number, then stop talking.

What I can tell you from the other side is that the flinch fades and the fee does not. Organisations pay facilitators all the time. Your number will not shock them nearly as much as it shocks you, and the ones who value what you do will simply say yes.

Women undercharge for this work constantly, and it almost always starts the same way: not with a client refusing to pay, but with us refusing to ask.

Where the maths lands for you

Count all the hours, first shop to front door. Decide what your time is honestly worth. Look at what your skill sells for per person out in the world, because that is the value you are handing over. Then set a fee that respects all three, and say it without apologising.

That is the whole method. The number will be different for your skill and your town. The working is the same.

What to do next

The fee is only half the money picture. The other half is what it costs you to run one, and what you actually keep after the flour, the printing and the fuel.

Read: What it costs to run a workshop, and what you keep