CostBite — Build Your Food Factory Business Case in Seven Steps

Every new food production line starts with a question: will this investment pay off? Answering that question typically requires weeks of spreadsheet work, scattered assumptions, and multiple rounds of revision before the numbers make sense. CostBite was built to change that.

What Is CostBite?

CostBite is an online application developed by Food Technology Services as part of the CostStack platform. It guides users through seven structured steps — from initial project setup to a complete five-year Profit & Loss statement — producing a professional business case for food factory investments. Whether you are evaluating a new processing line, scaling up an existing facility, or exploring a greenfield project, CostBite provides the financial framework to make informed decisions.

Who Is It For?

CostBite is designed for professionals in the food and biotech industry who need to assess the economic viability of production investments. This includes process engineers sizing equipment and estimating CAPEX, financial directors evaluating return on investment, R&D managers exploring new product concepts, and entrepreneurs building their first business case for a food start-up. The application bridges the gap between technical design and financial intelligence — a space where engineers and finance professionals rarely share the same tools.

Seven Steps, One Business Case

The CostBite workflow is organised in seven sequential steps:

1.Project Setup — Define your project name, production capacity, operating hours, and selling price. Import process data from FlowBite JSON files if available.

2.Equipment — Build your equipment list. Choose between three modes: Simple (a single CAPEX estimate), Complex (individual machine lines with scaling, utilities, and allocation), or Factory Design (load a complete factory layout from your saved designs).

3.Cost Items — Select a cost profile that matches your project stage: Lean for brownfield projects with existing infrastructure, Standard for typical greenfield investments, or Complex for projects involving new technology and strict regulatory requirements.

4.CAPEX — CostBite automatically calculates total investment costs based on your equipment and cost profile, including installation factors, engineering, contingency, and working capital.

5.Bill of Materials — Define your product costs. Again, three levels of detail: Simple (fixed unit prices), Recipe (a detailed ingredient and packaging recipe from the database), or Assortment (a weighted product mix of multiple recipes).

6.Profit & Loss — Generate a five-year P&L projection including revenue growth, inflation, labour costs, utilities, depreciation, tax, and financing. Key metrics such as EBITDA, net profit, and cumulative cash flow are calculated automatically.

7.Report — Review a comprehensive report with CAPEX breakdown charts, P&L bar graphs, cash flow curves, and sensitivity analysis. Export to PDF or Excel, or save the scenario to your personal data library.

From Rough to Refined

What makes CostBite particularly powerful is its iterative design philosophy. Product development is never a linear process — and neither is financial modelling. CostBite allows you to start with rough estimates in as little as fifteen minutes, then progressively refine your analysis as your project matures. The equipment axis scales from a single cost estimate to a full factory design. The product cost axis scales from a fixed price per kilogram to a multi-product assortment with detailed recipes. At every stage, you can save scenarios, compare outcomes, and revisit earlier assumptions.

This approach mirrors the reality of food industry project development: you iterate, you learn, you adjust. CostBite supports that workflow rather than forcing you into a rigid, one-pass model.

Part of a Larger Ecosystem

CostBite operates within the CostStack platform, where each user maintains a private data workspace. Equipment databases, ingredient libraries, recipes, and factory designs are stored securely and can be reused across projects. Data sharing between colleagues within the same organisation is controlled on a record-by-record basis, ensuring both collaboration and confidentiality.

Get Started

CostBite is available now at www.coststack.nl. Whether you need a quick feasibility check or a detailed investment analysis, the seven-step workflow adapts to your level of detail — and grows with your project.