Skip to contentFood cost calculator, with the price to charge.
Add each ingredient the way you buy it and the way you use it. You get the cost per portion, your food cost percentage and the menu price that hits your target.
Free, with no sign-up. It runs in your browser: nothing you type is sent to us.
The recipe
Yield is the part you can serve after trimming, peeling, bones and cooking loss. A chicken breast that loses a quarter is 75%.
How to use it
- Name the dish and how many portions the recipe makes. Cost a whole tray of moussaka and say 12, or cost one sandwich and leave it at 1.
- Add each ingredient as you buy it: the price and the pack it comes in, like €8.90 for 1 kg, or €21.00 for a 70 cl bottle.
- Then as you use it: 120 g, 4 cl, 2 eggs. Pack and portion can use different units of the same kind (kg and g, l and ml).
- Set the yield for anything that loses weight before it reaches the plate. Leave 100% for things you use whole.
- Type your menu price to see your food cost, or read off the price that hits your target. Copy the share link to send the costing to your chef or partner.
What the numbers mean
- Yield
- The share of what you buy that you can actually serve. Buy a kilo of chicken breast at €8.90, trim it and cook it, and 750 g is left: a yield of 75%. Then 120 g on the plate costs 8.90 × 0.12 ÷ 0.75 = €1.42, not the €1.07 the raw weight suggests.
- Cost per portion
- Every ingredient’s cost added up, divided by the portions the recipe makes.
- Food cost %
- Cost per portion as a share of the menu price. A €2.55 sandwich sold at €11.50 runs at 22%. If your menu prices include VAT, add the rate: the VAT isn’t yours to keep, so the percentage is worked out on the price before VAT.
- Price for your target
- Cost per portion divided by the target. At a 28% target, a €2.55 dish needs €9.11 before VAT. With a VAT rate typed in, the price is shown with VAT added too.
- Gross profit per portion
- What’s left of the price after the ingredients, before staff, rent and everything else.
Which target to aim for
There is no single right number. Many kitchens work to somewhere between 25% and 35% on food, and drinks usually run lower. What suits you depends on your rent, your staff costs and what your guests will pay. The 28% here is only a starting point: change it to yours.
Food cost moves when suppliers change their prices, so cost your best sellers again when an invoice goes up. To see which dishes earn their place on the menu, put their sales and margins through the menu engineering calculator.