Food cost calculator

Why food cost % matters more than the price on the menu

A dish that sells constantly can still be losing the kitchen money, and a dish nobody orders can be the most profitable thing on the menu. Popularity and profitability are different measurements, and food cost percentage is how you tell them apart — it is the share of the menu price that the ingredients themselves consume, before labour, rent or anything else touches it.

Two dishes both selling at ₱250 can have completely different economics: one costs ₱60 to plate, the other ₱110. Same price on the menu, same popularity with guests, and one of them is earning nearly twice what the other is per order. Without costing each dish individually, that gap is invisible.

Portioning, not shopping receipts

The most common mistake is entering the cost of the ingredient as bought rather than as used. A 25kg sack of rice and a tablespoon of rice in a dish are not the same number — the ingredient cost that belongs in this calculator is the portioned cost: what this specific plate actually consumes, at your actual purchase price.

That includes the parts that do not survive to the plate. If a fish loses a fifth of its weight to trimming, the usable flesh carries that lost fifth’s cost too — buying a kilo to serve 800 grams means the 800 grams cost what the kilo cost, not less.

What 28–35% actually means

That range is not an arbitrary rule of thumb — it is the target a full-service kitchen’s cost of sales is judged against, food and beverage counted separately because beverage margins run structurally higher (18–25%) than food does. A dish sitting well inside the range has room; one sitting well outside it is telling you something, whether that is an underpriced menu item, a recipe that has quietly grown in portion size, or a supplier cost that moved and never made it back into the price.

The range is not a target to hit on every single dish, though. A loss-leading starter or a signature dish priced to be seen on tables can run richer than 35% deliberately — what the range catches is the dish that is over it by accident.

What this calculator cannot tell you

It prices a dish exactly as written on paper. It has no way to know that the kitchen has been portioning generously all month, that a supplier quietly raised a price three weeks ago, or that a fifth of what was bought never made it to a plate at all. Those are real costs, and they are shift-level and stock-level problems rather than recipe-level ones — the only honest way to catch them is a stock ledger that records what actually left inventory and compares it against what the recipes say should have left, which is a different kind of tool than a calculator that costs one dish in isolation.

Questions, answered

What counts as an ingredient cost — retail price or what I actually paid?

What you actually paid, portioned to what the dish uses. If a kilo of chicken costs ₱220 and the dish uses 100g, the ingredient cost for that dish is ₱22, not ₱220. Waste and trim belong in that portioned figure too — if a fifth of the fish is discarded before it reaches the plate, the usable portion carries that cost.

What is a good food cost percentage?

Most full-service restaurants and hotel kitchens target 28–35% for food and 18–25% for beverages — beverages run lower because pours are more standardised and margins are structurally higher. A dish under the range is often fine (portion control done well); one well over it is usually a pricing problem, a portioning problem, or both.

Should labour or overhead be in this number?

No — this is food cost specifically, not total cost. Labour, rent, utilities and everything else sit in a separate calculation. Mixing them in makes the food-cost figure meaningless for the one thing it is good at: catching a recipe or a price that has drifted.

Does this account for waste across a whole shift, not just one plate?

No — it prices one dish as written. Shift-level waste, spoilage and shrinkage are a different, real cost, and the honest way to catch them is a stock ledger recording what actually left inventory against what recipes say should have left it — not a per-dish calculator, which can only tell you what the dish should cost if it is made exactly as costed.