Free tool
Food cost calculator
Free, no signup, and the rows stay in your own browser. Cost a dish the way the industry does: ingredients per batch, portions per batch, target food-cost percentage — and the menu price falls out.
Ingredients per batch
Batch ingredient cost: 0.00
Cost per portion: 0.00
Suggested price at 30%: 0.00
Unit-free arithmetic — whatever currency you type is the currency you read.
Rows are kept in this browser only, never uploaded. Reset wipes them.
Worth knowing before you price the menu
- Food cost % = ingredient cost ÷ menu price. Most full-service kitchens aim between 28% and 35%.
- Cost the whole batch, then divide by real portions served — trim and waste are part of the batch.
- Enter your current menu price and the calculator shows the percentage you are actually running.
- Rows save in your browser, so tomorrow’s tweak starts where today ended. Nothing is uploaded.
Priced the menu? The same margins survive online only if no platform takes a cut per order — see how ordering on your own site keeps the percentage you just calculated.
See commission-free online orderingCommon questions
What is a good food cost percentage?
Common targets run 28–35% for full service and lower for beverages. The right number is the one your rent, labour and volume can carry — the target field lets you price against your own.
Does it handle waste and trim?
Indirectly: cost the quantities you actually buy for the batch, not the grams that land on the plate, and yield loss is baked into the per-portion number.
Which currency does it use?
None — it is pure arithmetic. Enter prices in your currency and read results in the same one.
Is my recipe data uploaded?
No. Rows live in your browser’s local storage so they survive a reload on this device — they are never sent to a server, and Reset wipes them.
Is this the same as my monthly food cost percentage?
No, and mixing the two is where most pricing mistakes start. This one costs a recipe: what the ingredients in one batch cost, what that makes one portion cost, and how that sits against the menu price. The monthly number comes from inventory instead — opening inventory plus purchases, minus closing inventory, divided by food sales for the same period. Plate costing tells you whether a dish is priced right. The monthly percentage tells you whether portioning, waste, theft or a supplier price moved. They should land near each other: if your plates say 30% and the month says 38%, the gap is food that left the kitchen without being sold.
Can I price a whole menu here?
One recipe at a time, which is the right order — you need a real cost per dish before any menu decision means anything. Once every dish has a number, take the list into the menu engineering calculator: it puts contribution margin against how many you actually sell and sorts the menu into stars, plowhorses, puzzles and dogs. Cost first, then decide what to promote, reprice or cut.