Working out the price per stem at a florist

Speaker 1: Hey Jasmine.

We've had these new sunflowers in today and this delivery note tells us the cost for us but can you please work out the cost per stem for the customer?

Speaker 2: Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1: OK, cool, I'll be back in a bit.

Speaker 2: Morning.

Speaker 3: Morning. These look lovely.

Speaker 2: They're gorgeous, aren't they?

Speaker 3: Can I grab a quick bunch of 12 while I pop next door for a coffee?

Speaker 2: Yeah, of course you can.

Speaker 3: Cheers, thanks.

Speaker 2: (TO AUDIENCE) Oh wow. I'm really up against it here.

I've got to quickly work out what to charge per stem and then how much a bouquet of 12 will be.

Then I must not forget this customer is a regular so he needs a 10% discount.

I hope I can get all that done before he's back.

Speaker: I'm calculating the retail price we need to charge for our new range of sunflowers.

We've got 20 stems in this morning.

The first thing I need to do is work out what we paid per stem.

That's £9.00 divided by 20… is 0.45, so that's 45p.

To work out how much to sell them we times the trade price by 3.

That allows us to make some profit and covers the VAT.

So 3 times 45p is £1.35 a stem.

But the boss says to round sale prices to easier numbers so we can do the maths quickly when we're making up bouquets.

So I'm going to round down to £1.25.

We especially like to do this as 25p's are so easy.

For example, I know instantly that four 25p's come to £1.00.

Now I've got to figure out how much his bouquet will be.

OK, so he wants 12, it might be easier if I figure out 10 first. 10 times £1.25 is £12.50.

Then 2 more is £2.50.

So £12.50 plus £2.50 is £15.00.

But he's a regular so we need to give him the 10% discount.

So if 100% is £15.00, 10% off £15.00, that's £1.50.

Then £15.00 minus £1.50, that's £13.50. Great.

I just need to make his bouquet up.

(SPEAKER 3 GIVES SPEAKER 1 A BUNCH OF FLOWERS)

Speaker 1: Cheers, thanks!

(SPEAKER 1 EXITS)

Speaker 2: Hey Jas. How did you get on with those sunflowers?

Speaker 3: I had a bit of a mad rush.

I had a customer wanting a bouquet straight away.

Speaker 2: Wow, that was quick, so how did you work out the price per stem?

Speaker 3: So first of all I worked out what we paid for them.

So we've got 20 in a wrap, we paid £9.00.

So 9 divided by 20 is 45p a stem.

Then I timesed 45p by 3 to get our retail price, and that came in at £1.35 a stem.

I thought that was a bit fiddly so I took it down to £1.25.

Speaker 2: Perfect.

Speaker 3: Then I had to work out the bouquet price.

It was £15.00 but he was one of our regular customers so I took off 10%.

Speaker 2: OK, how did you do that?

Speaker 3: So I worked out the 10% first, which is £1.50.

So I took that off £15.00 and it came to £13.50.

Speaker 2: That sounds right. But as an alternative, to do it a different way, instead of working out 10% and taking that off the total cost, you can just work out 90% which is just one sum instead of 2.

But we do need to use a calculator for that.

OK, so we've got 0.9, that's for your 90% times 15 which comes to 13.5.

So that's £13.50. Exactly the same answer you got but just a different way of doing it.

Speaker 3: Great, thanks Kate.