Restaurant Tools
Food Cost Calculator
Find what one dish costs and what share of its price that is, in seconds, or switch to Recipe cost to work out the cost of a whole recipe and of each portion from ingredients, yields and portions.
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Food Cost Percentage
30.0%
Your food cost is 30% of the menu price.
Your food cost is higher than your menu price, which means the dish has a negative gross profit before other operating costs.
Want to calculate your target menu price?
Recommended Menu Price: $15.00
List what goes into the dish. For each ingredient, enter what you pay and the amount that ends up in the dish.
The example uses illustrative prices and yields, not market data.
Please fix the following:
The basics
What Is Food Cost?
Food cost is what a dish’s ingredients cost you. Divided by the menu price, it becomes the food cost percentage: the cents of each sales dollar that go to ingredients, before labor, rent and every other cost.
Count what you have to buy, not only what reaches the plate. Peeling, trimming and cooking loss are part of the cost, which is why Recipe cost mode asks for a yield on every ingredient. The gross profit it reports (menu price minus cost per portion) is not net profit: labor, rent and the rest still come out of it.
Reading the result. The percentage and the gross profit answer different questions. A $6.00 dish at 25% food cost leaves $4.50; a $20.00 dish at 40% leaves $12.00. Look at both. Each rests on the cost and yield you entered, so waste and over-portioning in the kitchen do not appear in one dish’s calculation: the food cost guide compares actual and theoretical food cost from inventory.
The formula
Food Cost divided by Menu Price × 100 = Food Cost %
Example: $2.71 ÷ $8.50 × 100 = 31.9% (the house chili below).
Behind the numbers
How Recipe Cost
Counts Each Ingredient
What you pay
A price for a quantity: $18.00 for a 50 lb sack, $4.99 for 1 lb, $5.40 for 1 can. The calculator turns it into a price per unit.
What ends up in the dish
The net amount the recipe uses, in any unit of the same kind. Buy by the pound, write the recipe in ounces.
Yield links the two
The share of what you buy that ends up usable. If onions lose 12% to peeling and trimming, the yield is 88%: 3 lb in the dish means buying about 3.41 lb.
Line cost = amount in the dish ÷ yield × price per unit.
Enter yield once
Yield covers trimming and cooking together. Beef that cooks down to 75% of its raw weight has a 75% yield. If it also loses 20% to trimming first, the combined yield is 80% × 75% = 60%. “Work out the yield” in each ingredient does that multiplication for you, so the same loss is never subtracted twice. If your recipe card lists raw weights, leave the yield at 100%.
Where yield numbers come from
Weigh a batch before and after in your own kitchen: that beats any table. For a starting estimate, the USDA Food Buying Guide lists yields under “as purchased” and “edible portion” columns and describes them as averages for planning. USDA’s cooking-yield table defines yield as hot cooked weight divided by raw weight, so food that absorbs water, such as rice or pasta, can come out above 100%.
Why weight and volume stay apart
Pounds convert to ounces, gallons to cups and dozens to each. Pounds do not convert to cups, because a cup of flour and a cup of honey weigh differently. If you buy flour by weight and the recipe uses cups, weigh one cup once and write the recipe in pounds or ounces. Conversions use the U.S. customary definitions: one pound is exactly 453.59237 grams, and one U.S. gallon is 231 cubic inches, or 128 fluid ounces.
Worked example
House Chili,
24 Portions
A 24-portion batch sold at $8.50 a bowl. Prices and yields are illustrative, not market data.
Beef is 61% of the recipe cost, and cooking it down means buying 8 lb to get 6 lb into the pot. At $8.50 the food cost is 31.9%, 1.9 points above a 30% target: the portion cost should be $2.55 or less, or the price $9.05 or more. Because beef drives the cost, its price and yield are the first things to check.
To run it yourself, switch the calculator to Recipe cost and choose “Load example recipe”.
Open the calculatorUse with judgment
Set Your Own
Food Cost Target
No table can tell you the right food cost for your restaurant, because it depends on what everything else costs you. Work backward from sales: subtract labor, your other operating costs and the profit you want. What remains is the share available for food.
Target food cost % = 100% − labor % − other operating costs % − profit goal %.
The 30% in the calculator is a starting value, not a benchmark: replace it with your own. The food cost guide walks through a full month of numbers, and the Labor Cost and Profit calculators give you the other two inputs.
What to check first
What Moves
Your Food Cost
Each change below is one edited number in the house chili. Try them in the calculator and compare.
Yield
Beef yield from 75% to 70% means buying 8.57 lb instead of 8: $2.85 more per batch, $0.12 per portion. Food cost goes from 31.9% to 33.3%.
Supplier price
A 10% rise on beef adds $3.99 per batch, $0.17 per portion, and takes food cost to 33.9%.
Portion size
Serving 22 bowls from the same batch instead of 24 raises each to $2.96. Food cost: 34.8%.
Menu price
At $9.00 instead of $8.50, the same bowl runs at 30.2%.
Sources and Method
- USDA Food Buying Guide: yield tables with “as purchased” and “edible portion” columns, described as averages for planning.
- USDA Table of Cooking Yields for Meat and Poultry (Agricultural Research Service, 2012): cooking yield as hot cooked weight divided by raw weight.
- NIST Handbook 44, Appendix C: the pound and gallon definitions behind the unit conversions.
Every price and yield on this page is an illustrative input. RestoCalculator does not receive or store what you type into the calculator: it stays in your browser and is gone when you close or refresh the page.
Keep going
What Should I Calculate Next?
You now know what a portion costs. These two steps follow from it, in this order.
Turn the cost into a price
Enter the cost per portion with a food cost or margin target that you choose. The Menu Price Calculator shows the price that matches it, rounded up to a real menu price, and what the rounding does to food cost.
Open the Menu Price CalculatorPut food cost back in the whole picture
Food cost is one line. Enter your food cost total in the Restaurant Profit Calculator with labor, rent and your other costs to see an estimated operating profit for the same period.
Open the Restaurant Profit CalculatorAbout this page
Results use the costs, yields and prices you type in; nothing is looked up for you. These are estimates, not accounting, tax or legal advice.
Good to know
Frequently Asked Questions
Does food cost include labor or packaging?
Food cost counts ingredients. Labor is tracked separately as a labor cost. Packaging is up to you: if you want takeout containers in the number, add them as ingredient lines, and apply the same rule to every dish so the results stay comparable.
How do I enter an ingredient I buy by the case?
Enter the case price and the number of units in it. A $48.00 case of 24 cans is $48.00 for a quantity of 24 each. A 40 lb case at $99.60 is $99.60 for 40 lb.
How do I cost a sauce or prep recipe that goes into several dishes?
Cost it as its own recipe first, then use it as an ingredient: the price paid is the sauce recipe cost, the quantity bought is the batch yield (for example 4 quarts), and the recipe unit is what one dish uses (for example 2 fl oz).
Why can't I convert pounds to cups?
Weight and volume only convert if you know the ingredient's density: a cup of flour and a cup of honey weigh differently. Weigh a cup of the ingredient once and write the recipe in weight, or write the recipe in the same kind of unit you buy.
Is 30% a good food cost?
30% is the calculator's starting value, not a benchmark. The right number depends on the rest of your costs and your profit goal: Set Your Own Food Cost Target, above, shows how to work it out for your restaurant.
Does the calculator save my recipe?
No. What you type stays in your browser and is gone when you close or refresh the page. RestoCalculator does not receive or store it.
Calculate Your Food
Cost in Seconds
Cost a recipe from its ingredients, or check a single dish against its menu price.