Find the cost of filling each jar. Subtract the cost from the selling price to find the profit.
50 jars
Practice makes perfect
We want to find the number of jars we need to sell in order to break even. First we need to find the cost of filling each jar. To find the profit we then subtract the cost from the selling price.
Selling price - Cost of nuts=Profit
Our break even point is when the profits are equal to the money that was spent on material to get started.
Cost of Nuts Per Jar
We know that each 1-lb jar will be 4 parts peanuts and 1 part cashews, giving us 5 parts in total. Let's express this algebraically.
4/5lb peanuts +1/5lb cashews=1 -lb jar
Peanuts cost $3 per pound and cashews cost $6 per pound. We can include this in our algebraic expression to find the cost of filling each jar j.
4/5lb peanuts* $3 +1/5lb cashews* $6=j
Now we can calculate this cost.
The jars are being sold for $5 each. By subtracting the cost from the selling price we find the profit from each jar.
5-3.60=$1.40
Break Even Point
To find our break even poin, we need to know how many jars we need to sell in order to make a profit that is equal to the $70 we spent on purchasing nuts.
1.40j=70 ⇒ j=50
We need to sell 50 jars of nuts to break even.
