Food cost calculator

Per dish answers “is this item priced right?”. Add up what each ingredient in one portion costs: the plate cost. Divide it by the menu price for the dish’s food cost percentage. To price a new dish, divide the plate cost by your target instead (Toast).

Worked example, the calculator’s starting dish: a burger with fries whose ingredients cost $3.50, sold at $15.00. Food cost is $3.50 ÷ $15.00 = 23.3%. At a 30% target the lowest price is $3.50 ÷ 0.30 = $11.67, so this burger has room on price. The ingredient costs are ours, for illustration; use your own invoices.

Per period answers “what did food actually cost us?”. It catches what recipe costing misses: waste, over-portioning, comps, theft and price rises between orders. The formula is (opening inventory + purchases − closing inventory) ÷ food sales (Toast). With the calculator’s starting numbers, ($8,200 + $31,500 − $7,900) = $31,800 of food used, against $104,000 in food sales: 30.6%.

If the period figure runs well above what your recipes say it should, the gap is food that left the kitchen without being sold. That gap is usually the cheapest money to find.

Most operators work to a target between 30% and 35%, a range Toast calls a rule of thumb, adding that “one target can’t fit every operation” (Toast). The National Restaurant Association’s survey of more than 900 operators gives the actual medians for 2024:

The Association says these figures are not standards or goals for any one restaurant. Read them as context: a neighborhood restaurant under $2 million in sales running 34% is close to the middle, not failing.

Two numbers matter more than food cost on its own. The first is prime cost, food and drink plus labor, where Toast suggests 60% of sales or lower as a benchmark (Toast). The second is the dollars each plate leaves. Toast’s example: a $15 burger at 30% food cost leaves $10.50, while a $32 steak at 35% leaves $20.80 (Toast). With margins this thin, a few dollars a plate decides the year. To see both alongside your overall margin, use the profit margin calculator.

1. Cost every recipe at its yield, not its purchase weight. A case of whole chicken is not all usable meat. Weigh what is left after trimming and cost from that.
2. Fix the portion before the price. Scoops, scales and plated photos on the line stop the generous-hand drift that recipe costing never sees.
3. Re-cost your top ten sellers every quarter. They carry most of the volume, so a 50-cent rise in one ingredient there costs more than a menu-wide change elsewhere.
4. Keep a waste log for two weeks. Anything thrown out, comped or remade, with the reason. It shows where the period number and the recipe number part ways.
5. Promote dishes by dollars left, not by percentage. Put the dishes that leave the most per plate where guests look first, on the menu and on your website.
6. Count inventory the same way every time. Same day, same units, same prices. An inconsistent count makes the period number swing for no real reason.

Food cost is half of what a plate is worth to you; the other half is how many guests order it. If covers are the problem rather than margins, start with our restaurant marketing guide.