We’ve all dreamed of the magical world that is Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. That fictional factory will forever be ingrained in the minds of viewers but what if the factory came to life? In this purely hypothetical scenario, we imagined what it would cost if someone like Willy Wonka was a real-life person. How much would it cost to run a place with a chocolate river, a glass elevator and a team of Oompa Loopmas? Well, we at Advanced Technology Services did the math of how much it would cost and maintain the Chocolate Factory from this iconic book.

We estimated that the yearly energy cost alone would cost $2 million. If Wonka wanted to go green with the factory and use solar energy, it would take approximately 3,221 solar panels to supply the 1,180,692 kWH needed for the year, costing Wonka $2.37 billion.

And let’s talk about some of those iconic scenes in the book and movie like the golden eggs, the lick-able wallpaper and the glass elevator! From our calculations (details in the infographic below), each golden egg would cost a little of $6,000 each. Nothing cheap for Mr. Wonka! To cover 650 square feet of hallway in lick-able wallpaper would cost around $2,600. The glass elevator would cost around $109 million when you combine the cost of an average elevator with a low-end rocket. And we haven’t even talked about the Oompa Loompas. Wonka would need to spend around $8 million a year on healthcare for his little helpers.

More details can be found in the infographic below. The grand total to keep the factory running each year, from our estimates, would be around $224.6 million! Would it be worth it to bring the magical world to life?

 What Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory Would Cost Today  from Advanced Technology Services