Food Cost Calculator and Menu Price Calculator

How to calculate food cost per plate

Here is the calculation for the cheeseburger with fries the calculator starts with:

1. Cost each ingredient. Ground beef at $5.49 a pound is about $0.34 an ounce, so 6 oz costs $2.06. A bun from a pack of 8 at $4.99 is $0.62. Do the same for the cheese, lettuce, tomato, fries and sauce.
2. Allow for yield. Romaine loses about a quarter of its weight to outer leaves and core, so its yield is 75%: 1 oz on the plate costs $0.17, not $0.12. Tomatoes lose their cores and ends, about 90% yield.
3. Add it up. The seven ingredients come to $3.97.
4. Add the Q factor. 5% for frying oil, salt and seasoning brings it to a plate cost of $4.17.
5. Price it. At a 30% food cost target: $4.17 ÷ 0.30 = $13.89. Rounded to $13.99, the burger runs at 29.8% food cost and leaves $9.82 of gross profit per plate to pay for staff, rent and everything else.

For a batch recipe, such as a pot of chili or a tray of lasagna, enter the whole batch and the number of portions it gives. The calculator divides the cost for you.

How to calculate food cost percentage for your restaurant

The calculator above gives you the theoretical food cost of one dish: what it should cost if every portion is exact and nothing is wasted. Your actual food cost percentage for the whole kitchen comes from your inventory counts and your sales:

Count your stock at the start and the end of the week or month, add up the invoices in between, and enter your food sales for the same period:

If your actual food cost is several points above what your recipe costings say, the money is leaking somewhere between the delivery door and the plate: heavy portions, waste, spoilage, staff meals nobody records, or dishes that were never costed. That gap is worth more attention than any single price change.

What is a good food cost percentage?

There is no single right number. These are rough ranges commonly quoted for different kinds of places, as a starting point only:

What matters is your whole menu and your prime cost (food plus labor), which many operators try to keep at or below about 60% to 65% of sales. A higher food cost can be fine when the dish needs little labor, and a low one doesn't help if nobody orders the dish.

How to calculate menu prices

There are three common ways to price a menu item. Most restaurants use the first and check with the other two:

• Food cost percentage method. Menu price = plate cost ÷ target food cost %. This is what the menu price calculator above does. Simple, and it keeps every dish in line with your target.
• Gross profit method. Decide how much money each plate must leave after ingredients, then add the plate cost. Useful for expensive proteins: a $12 plate cost at 30% would be a $40 steak, but $12 + $24 of gross profit gives a $36 steak that still earns more than most dishes on the menu.
• Market check. Look at what three to five comparable places near you charge for a similar dish. If the price you need is well above theirs, the fix is usually the recipe or the portion, not a lower price.

Then round. Prices ending in .95 or .99 are common in casual places; whole numbers without the cents often suit a more upscale menu. The calculator's "Round the menu price" option shows you the food cost at the rounded price.

How to lower food cost without raising prices

• Portion to the recipe. A scale on the line and the right ladles and scoops. One extra ounce of protein on every plate can move the whole kitchen's food cost by a point or more.
• Keep a waste log. Spoiled produce, dropped plates, returned dishes. What gets written down gets fixed.
• Re-cost your best sellers when prices move. Your top ten dishes are most of your food cost. Check them every time a supplier price changes.
• Use the whole ingredient. Trim from one dish can be the base of another: a soup, a staff meal, a special. It raises your real yield.
• Look at what sells, not only what it costs. A dish with a low food cost that sells three times a week does less for you than a slightly more expensive one that sells thirty times a night.

Plate cost is half the picture. The other half is sales.

Menu engineering puts every dish on two scales: how much gross profit it leaves per plate (this calculator) and how many you sell. Dishes high on both are the ones to protect and put where the eye lands first on the menu. Dishes low on both are the ones to rework or drop. Without real sales numbers per dish, it's guesswork.

OwnDesk POS Restaurant records every dish sold, table by table, and its dashboard shows your top dishes and sales for any date range, across every location, exported to CSV when you want to work with the numbers. Put those counts next to the plate costs from this calculator and you know which dishes carry your menu. Waiters take orders on tablets, the kitchen gets its own screen, and it is a one-time payment with no monthly fee per terminal.

Add this calculator to your website

Frequently asked questions