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Restaurant food cost calculator

Cost a recipe from purchased ingredients and usable yield, find food cost per portion and food cost percentage, and work out a menu price at your own target. Then check actual food cost for a period from inventory and purchases.

Free to use without signup. Your financial inputs stay in the browser and can be saved to a file on your device.

What you will enter

  • Sellable portions per batch (portions): Use actual usable portions from this recipe. Do not count portions you cannot sell.
  • Menu price before tax ($ / portion): Price for one portion, before sales tax and tips.
  • Target food cost percentage (%): Your chosen target, not an industry recommendation. The tool does not prescribe a percentage.

The formula

Ingredient cost = purchase cost × usable quantity in batch ÷ (purchase quantity × usable yield). Portion food cost = total batch food cost ÷ sellable portions. Price at target = portion food cost ÷ target food cost ratio.

A worked example

Fictional example: $40 of chicken purchased as 10 lb at 80% usable yield costs $20 for 4 usable lb. Adding $10 of ready-to-use sauce makes a $30 batch. Ten sellable portions cost $3 each: 20% food cost at a $15 menu price, or a $10 price at a chosen 30% target.

How to use the result

Keep each ingredient in one unit

If the purchase quantity is in pounds, enter the quantity used in pounds too. Convert before entering: for example, 8 oz is 0.5 lb. The tool does not infer density or convert between mass and volume.

Apply yield once

Yield is the usable share of what you purchased. For a ready-to-use ingredient, enter 100%. Do not reduce the purchase quantity and apply the same trimming loss again.

Batch cost, then portion cost

The tool adds every ingredient line into one batch cost, then divides by the portions you can actually sell from that batch. If a recipe makes 12 portions but two are always trimmed away or held back, enter 10. Sellable portions are the denominator for every result.

Menu price is before tax, and the remainder is margin, not profit

Enter the price a guest pays before sales tax and tips. Price less food cost is the dish's gross margin on food. It is not profit until labor, packaging, fees, rent and everything else are paid from it.

Price with the whole operation in mind

The target price is arithmetic, not a recommendation. Labor, packaging, fees, overhead, competing offers and what guests value still affect a workable menu price.

Questions owners ask

How do I price a menu item from a target food cost percentage?

Divide the portion food cost by the target as a decimal. A $3.00 portion at a 30% target gives $3.00 ÷ 0.30 = $10.00 before tax. The tool shows that price next to the food cost percentage at the price you actually entered, so you can see both directions of the same formula.

What food cost percentage should I aim for?

The tool does not set one, because there is no universal target. The right percentage depends on your labor, rent, service style and menu mix: a counter concept with low labor can carry a higher food cost than a full-service dining room. Choose a target from your own projected P&L, then test dishes against it.

Which units can I use?

Any unit from the list, as long as the purchased quantity and the usable quantity in the batch use the same one: oz, lb, g, kg, ml, L, fl oz or each. Convert before you enter, for example 8 oz is 0.5 lb, and treat an item priced by the case as one purchase of that many units. The tool never converts between weight and volume.

Does menu price minus food cost equal profit?

No. That amount still needs to cover labor, packaging, payment and delivery fees, rent and other overhead. The result is deliberately labeled as price less food cost.

Is this actual food cost percentage?

This is theoretical recipe food cost at the entered purchase costs and yields. Actual food cost uses inventory and purchasing records and can differ because of waste, portions, price changes and sales mix. The period worksheet on this page calculates that actual figure from four amounts.

Actual food cost for a period

What did food actually cost last week or last month?

The recipe calculator above is theoretical: what one dish should cost at the prices and yields you entered. This worksheet answers a different question from your records: what share of the period's food sales the food that left inventory represents, using the formula a P&L uses. Its four inputs stay in this section; the plan file above saves the recipe inputs only.

What you will enter

  • Opening food inventory ($): The counted and costed food on hand at the start of the period. Use the same counting and costing method as the closing count.
  • Food purchases in the period ($): Reconciled food receipts for the period, net of supplier credits and returns, by actual receiving date and cut-off rather than the invoice's printed date. Enter 0 if nothing was received.
  • Closing food inventory ($): The counted and costed food on hand at the end of the period. It cannot exceed opening inventory plus purchases.
  • Net food sales in the period ($): Food sales for the same dates after discounts and refunds, before sales tax and tips. Keep the scope matched: leave beverage sales out unless beverage inventory and purchases are included above.

The formula

Food used = opening inventory + purchases − closing inventory. Actual food cost % = food used ÷ net food sales × 100, with every amount from the same period.

A worked example

Fictional example: $5,000 opening inventory plus $12,000 of purchases less $4,000 closing inventory means $13,000 of food left inventory in the period, whether sold, wasted or eaten by staff. Against $40,000 of net food sales for the same period, actual food cost is 32.5%.

Recipe cost and actual cost answer different questions

Recipe cost prices one dish. This worksheet reports the whole operation's actual food-used percentage and nothing else; it has no expected-cost input and does not measure variance. A fair comparison needs a same-period, sales-weighted recipe or menu-mix cost on the same cost basis, kept in separate records. Never set one dish's recipe percentage against the operation's actual figure, and never read a difference as waste or theft: counting, unit and costing errors and unrecorded movements can also explain differences.

Reconcile the records before entering them

Purchases are reconciled receipts net of credits and returns, cut off by actual receiving date. Transfers to another location, revaluations, staff meals and spoilage write-offs are not separate inputs here: decide how your accounting treats them and adjust the amounts first, so the percentage matches what your P&L will say. The worksheet does not cover every situation; it covers the four amounts it asks for.

No target is built in

The worksheet reports the percentage your records produced and nothing else. Compare it with your own plan and with last period, not with a generic industry number.

Keep working on the decision

Sources and scope

Planning estimates based on your inputs. Check the assumptions against your actual quotes, recipes and operating records. Not legal, tax or accounting advice.

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