Business Case · Channel Economics

Where should the selling hours go?

The labour page found that selling is 60% of the work. The REKO page found the cheapest channel is contracting. This page puts every route to market side by side on the only two measures that matter once the price is set: what a kilo actually nets after its own costs, and how many of your hours it consumes to get there.

The finding, and it is not what the plan implies. Among the direct channels the differences are small — after costs and after valuing your own time, REKO, home delivery and farm-gate sales land within roughly 15 SEK/kg of each other. The gap that actually matters is between any direct channel and the abattoir: about 100 SEK per kilo.

So the strategic question is not "REKO or subscription?" It is "what share goes direct at all", which the operating model already treats as its central lever. Choose channels for how many customers they reach and how reliably, not for a per-kilo advantage that mostly is not there.

The one real difference is time. REKO costs almost nothing in money and a great deal in evenings; couriered subscription costs money and few hours. At 50 head that trade is worth a few hundred hours a year — which is the difference between a manageable business and a second full-time job.

The channel calculator

All prices are ex-VAT, to match the economics pages. Set your own assumptions; the mix at the bottom decides the blended result.

Effort against reward

Each channel placed by what it nets per kilo after its own costs (vertical) and how many of your hours it takes per 100 kg sold (horizontal). Up and to the left is better. Bubble size is the share of your volume currently allocated to it.

Net after direct costs

Abattoir floor price

What each kilo actually earns

Gross price, then the deductions each channel imposes, then what is left after your own time is valued.

Net after costs and labour

Your labour, valued

Delivery, packaging and fees

Channel by channel

How to read each channel

What each one is really for

REKO-ringar — acquisition, not volume. No fees and no intermediary, but three or four evenings a fortnight and a contracting membership. Use it to meet customers and learn what they pay per cut, then move them onto a standing order.
Home-delivered subscription — the core. Predictable, plannable, and it is what paces the herd. It costs real money per box in courier or fuel, and that cost is the thing to negotiate hardest.
Farm gate or farm shop — the best margin per hour, because the customer does the travelling. It needs a registered facility and, realistically, a destination worth driving to.
Restaurants — carcass balance, not margin. They take the premium cuts at trade prices, which is exactly what makes the boxes harder to fill. Worth it for the cuts you cannot otherwise place, and for the reference.
The abattoir — the floor, and a real one. Around 100 SEK/kg below direct sales, zero hours, instant. It is what turns an unsold animal into a smaller profit instead of a crisis.

What this comparison cannot capture

Customer acquisition cost differs enormously and is not in these numbers. A REKO evening that produces four new subscribers is worth far more than the meat sold that night.
Reliability is not priced. A subscription that renews itself is worth more per kilo than a channel of equal margin that has to be refilled every month.
Payment terms differ. REKO is prepaid by Swish before pickup; restaurants pay on invoice, often in 30 days. That is a cash-flow difference, not a margin one — see the cash-flow page.
The premium cuts do not distribute evenly. Restaurants want the top 15% of the animal; households want a balanced box. The carcass page is where that tension is quantified.

Sources

What is modelled rather than published. The two anchors that are real are the courier rate (a butcher shipping 0–10 kg for 120 SEK, and a farm charging 500 SEK to bring a 10 kg box into Stockholm) and the abattoir price (90 SEK/kg carcass, from this plan's own model). Everything else — hours per round, kilos per REKO evening, packaging cost per kilo, the trade discount a restaurant expects — is an assumption, set here to what looks reasonable and exposed as a slider so you can disagree with it. No Swedish source publishes channel-level margins for direct meat sales. The shape of the answer is robust; the individual numbers are not.

Open questions

What this page could not settle, why each answer changes a decision, and where it has to come from. Blocking means do not commit capital until it is answered.

Question	Why it matters	Where the answer comes from
What does a courier actually charge for a chilled or frozen box in the Stockholm area?Blocking	It is the largest single deduction in the channel this plan depends on. At 12 SEK/kg it is manageable; at 50 SEK/kg — which one competitor effectively charges — it removes the entire direct-sales advantage over the abattoir on small boxes.	Quotes from Budbee, Airmee, Best Transport or a local refrigerated courier, for the actual box size and temperature.
How many kilos can one REKO evening actually move?Blocking	Everything about REKO's economics turns on this and it is pure assumption here. At 60 kg an evening it competes; at 20 kg it is a marketing expense wearing a sales channel's clothes.	One season of selling. Until then, ask producers already in the Stockholm rings what a normal evening looks like.
What discount do restaurants expect, and on which cuts?Important	Restaurants are the natural home for the premium cuts, and the discount they expect decides whether that is a good trade or a bad one against selling the same cuts to households.	Three Stockholm restaurants: ask price per kilo for entrecôte and oxfilé, volume per month, and payment terms.
Is a farm shop realistic at this location?Important	It has the best margin per hour of any channel because the customer travels — but only if enough of them will. It also requires its own registration.	Traffic on the road past the holding; other farm shops within an hour of Stockholm and what they say about footfall.
What is the real cost of an unsold box?Background	Frozen stock has a shelf life and freezer capacity has a cost. The channel mix should be chosen partly to avoid carrying inventory into the next season.	Your own freezer costs once volumes are known; ask the cutting plant about their storage terms.

Prepared August 2026 as a planning aid. Prices are ex-VAT to match the other economics pages; note that producers' published prices are consumer prices including 12% moms and are converted here. Delivery, packaging and time assumptions are modelled and adjustable — only the courier rate and the abattoir price come from external sources. Labour is valued at the operating model's rate; setting it to zero shows the owner-operator view where your time funds your income. Not financial advice.