Shelf Price to FOB
You do not usually get to pick your FOB. You pick the shelf price the brand has to hit, and the FOB is whatever survives after everyone else takes their margin.
A brand rarely sets price from the bottom up. The buyer tells you the shelf price the set will carry, or the category tells you, and everything above it is fixed: the retailer takes its margin, the distributor takes its margin, the state takes its excise, and the truck takes its freight. What is left over is your FOB, and the only question is whether it clears your cost.
Pricing forward and hoping the shelf lands right is how brands end up in a set they cannot afford to be in. Pricing backwards tells you before you quote whether the shelf price on the table is one you can actually supply.
Start with the shelf price per bottle. Take out the retailer's margin and you have the bottle cost to trade — what the retailer pays the distributor. Multiply by the case pack and you have the case cost to trade. Take out the distributor's margin and you have the distributor's laid-in cost. Now subtract the three things that got the case there: freight, state excise, and any other per-case taxes. What remains is your FOB.
Written out: FOB = shelf × (1 − retail %) × units × (1 − distributor %) − freight − excise − other taxes
The margins are margins on selling price, not markups on cost. A 30% margin is a 42.9% markup, and confusing the two is the single most common way a price sheet comes out wrong. Ruby Pro's builder lets you toggle between the two so you can enter whichever number the buyer actually gave you.
Excise is the term that moves most between markets, and it is charged per gallon, so the case pack decides how hard it lands. A twelve-pack of 750mL is 2.38 gallons; the same brand in 1.75L sixes is 2.77. Kentucky's wine rate is $3.82 a gallon against California's $0.20, which is roughly nine dollars a case of difference on identical product.
Six jurisdictions in our table step to a higher rate above an ABV threshold — a 15% Zinfandel is taxed above a 13% one in California, Texas and Georgia, and a fortified wine over 17.259% ABV moves up a bracket in Florida. Enter the real ABV, because a calculator that ignores it is quietly using the wrong rate.
A Chardonnay in Florida, twelve 750mL bottles to the case, 13.5% ABV, shelf price $19.99, freight $8 a case, with both the retailer and the distributor holding 30% margins.
Bottle cost to trade is $19.99 × 0.70 = $13.99. Case cost to trade is $13.99 × 12 = $167.92. Distributor laid-in is $167.92 × 0.70 = $117.54. Florida charges $2.25 a gallon on wine under 17.259% ABV, and the case is 2.38 gallons, so excise is $5.35.
FOB = $117.54 − $8.00 − $5.35 = $104.19 a case. If your COGS is $52, that is a 50.1% supplier margin and the deal works. If your COGS is $85, it does not, and you found out before you quoted it.
FOB is the price the supplier charges the distributor for a case, before freight and before any state excise. It is the brand's revenue line. Everything the distributor and retailer add on top of it is their margin, not yours.
No. Laid-in cost is what the case costs the distributor once it has arrived and been taxed: FOB plus freight plus state excise plus any other per-case taxes. The distributor's margin is calculated against laid-in, not against FOB, which is why freight and excise quietly eat into the shelf price you can support.
In some states, yes. California, Texas and Georgia step wine to a higher rate above 14% ABV, Florida steps above 17.259%, New York taxes wine over 24% at the liquor rate, and California doubles the spirits rate above 100 proof. Our tools apply those tiers and flag the states where we are applying a single rate at every ABV so you know to check.
In a control jurisdiction the state board sets the shelf price and takes its margin there, so there is no supplier-paid per-gallon excise to model. Our tools flag those markets rather than quietly returning zero, and show a published effective rate for planning only. Confirm the posted price and the state markup with the board before you commit.
Planning estimate only — not tax or legal advice. State excise is applied from a maintained reference table and flagged where a rate is flat or a jurisdiction is control. Verify the excise class for your product and market, and confirm final figures with your distributor.