Markers look like the cheap option. When we do the math with kitchen managers, they usually aren’t, and a marker can’t tell you what expires tomorrow.
Most kitchens start with Sharpie food labels: a roll of tape, a marker from the cup by the pass, and the cook writes the item, the date and their initials. It feels free. There’s no machine to buy and nothing to learn. So when we sit down with a kitchen manager to talk about printing labels, the first thing we usually hear is some version of "markers are cheaper."
Markers used to be the clearly cheaper option. Their price has gone up (Sharpie’s maker raised prices three times in 2025 because of tariffs), and once you count how many of them disappear, that’s often no longer true.
A fine point Sharpie costs about $1.25 at a restaurant supply store: $14.99 for a 12-pack at WebstaurantStore when we checked in September 2026. The problem isn’t the price of one marker. It’s how many of them a kitchen goes through.
In one of our first meetings, a kitchen manager was sure markers were the cheap option. So we counted together. We didn’t just count how many markers the restaurant bought. We looked at where they went.
Markers leave in apron pockets at the end of a shift. Cooks take them home and they don’t come back. A marker that gets wet on the line, from the sink, the steam table or a wet hand, often stops writing, and some don’t last more than a week. By midweek the cup by the pass is empty and someone is asking to borrow a pen.
When we added it up, that kitchen was spending $50 to $60 a month on markers, and some months closer to $100. At $1.25 a marker, that’s 40 to 80 markers a month leaving the kitchen. That’s before the tape.
BOH Wiz labels are $99 for 4,000, about 2.5 cents a label. For the kitchens we talk with, that usually works out to $25 to $40 a month in labels, depending on how much they prep. A kitchen printing 50 labels a day spends about $38 a month.
The printer is $299.99 one time. Spread over three years, that’s about $8 a month, and after that it costs nothing. It uses no ink: it’s a thermal printer, so the only thing you buy is labels. The software is $0 a month, with no contract. You can see every number on our pricing page.
So in some kitchens, printing costs less than markers. In others, it comes out about even. In the kitchens we’ve run the numbers with, markers haven’t come out clearly ahead once the missing ones were counted.
Now take the best case for markers: a kitchen where nobody ever walks off with one.
A complete label has to be right every time: the item name (about 15 characters), the prep date (8), the use-by date (8) and the cook’s initials (3), plus short tags like "Prep" and "Use by". Call it about 40 characters per label.
Take a kitchen that labels 50 items a day, and a marker that survives a week on the line:
Then look at the time. Writing a label by hand takes about 15 seconds: find a marker that works, tear the tape, write it all out. A printed label takes about 3 seconds from the prep list. For that same kitchen:
In that best case, a marker that lasts a week costs about $5 a month, less than the labels. But it costs five extra hours of labor every month, and most of it lands during the busiest part of the day. Multiply five hours by what you pay a prep cook, and the marker stops looking cheap. In a real kitchen, where markers go missing too, printing usually wins on both.
Rushed handwriting is also where mistakes come from: a 1 that looks like a 7, a use-by date counted wrong, a label nobody can read the next morning. The FDA Food Code requires ready-to-eat, time and temperature controlled food held more than 24 hours to be date marked, and it can be kept for up to 7 days at 41°F or below, counting the day it was prepared as day 1. Local health codes can be stricter. A label an inspector can’t read doesn’t protect you.
There’s a reason large restaurant groups moved to printed labels instead of markers. They know it’s cheaper once you count everything, they know it’s faster, and they know it makes the job better for their team.
Ask any cook or chef how they feel about writing "Chicken, grilled, sliced" for the fifth time in a shift, with the date and the use-by date, on a piece of tape. Nobody likes it. It’s the most repetitive part of prep, and it adds nothing to the food.
We hear this in almost every kitchen we visit, too. Younger cooks grew up with a phone in their hand. They would rather tap a screen than hunt for a marker. Tapping an item on the prep list and having the label print is how they expect the job to work. When labeling is easy, it gets done. When it’s a chore, it gets skipped in the middle of a rush, and an unlabeled container is the first thing a manager or an inspector finds.
This is the biggest difference, and it has nothing to do with price.
A marker writes a date. That’s all it does. It doesn’t know what you prepped yesterday, what expires tomorrow, or how many pans of chicken went into the walk-in this week.
When labels print from the prep list, every label becomes a record:
A cup of markers can’t show you any of that. Here’s how the prep list and the printer work together.
We wrote more about the switch in why we stopped handwriting prep labels.
The fastest way to settle "markers are cheaper" is to test it. Start a free 30-day trial: we send the printer, you print through a month of real prep, and label history shows exactly how many labels your kitchen used. Put that next to what you spent on markers last month. If the printer goes back, we pay the return shipping.
About the author: Jose Salazar
Jose Salazar has worked in restaurants for more than 20 years as a restaurant manager, general manager, executive chef and corporate training manager, and has helped open 63 restaurant locations for several restaurant companies. He studied restaurant management and culinary arts, and leads product at BOH Wiz.
Tap an item on the prep list and the label prints. $0 today, and if the printer goes back, you pay nothing.
May 2, 2026 · 5 min read · Kitchen workflow
Three things handwritten labels do badly, why they cost a working kitchen real money, and what changed when we replaced them.
Read post →
May 2, 2026 · 6 min read · Restaurant operations
The 5-year math nobody on the sales call walks you through. One-time-purchase vs SaaS for restaurant prep labels.
Read post →
May 2, 2026 · 4 min read · Product walkthrough
A walkthrough of the BOH Wiz prep-list-to-printer flow, with screenshots from the actual app. Tap an item, label prints in three seconds.
Read post →
Comparing options? Read prep labeling systems compared, prep list software compared, or see how the prep list prints labels.
