Calculate your ideal food cost percentage, gross margin per dish, and find the right menu price — ingredient by ingredient.
Name your dish, set the menu price, and batch size
Add each ingredient with its purchase price and recipe quantity
| Ingredient | Unit | Price / Unit | Recipe Qty | Waste % | Cost | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
$ | % | $0.00 |
Optional — include for fully-loaded margin view
Track costs, manage vendors, run pre-shift briefings — and stop doing menu math in spreadsheets.
Food cost percentage is the ratio of the ingredient cost per serving to the menu price charged to the guest. It tells you what portion of every dollar a guest pays goes directly to covering ingredients. Most full-service restaurants aim for an overall food cost between 28% and 32%.
Formula: Cost Per Serving ÷ Menu Price × 100
The ideal food cost percentage varies by concept. Fine dining targets 28–35% because of premium ingredients and higher menu prices. Casual dining runs 28–32%. QSR and fast casual concepts aim for 25–30% on tighter margins. Bar food and appetizers can hit 20–25% due to lower ingredient cost, while non-alcoholic beverages often run just 10–15%.
Your target should account for your concept, market, and overall menu mix — high-margin items can subsidize lower-margin signature dishes.
Gross margin per dish is the menu price minus the cost per serving. If a dish sells for $22 and the ingredients cost $6.60, the gross margin is $15.40 (70%). This matters because a low food cost % on a cheap dish may still produce less gross profit than a higher food cost % on an expensive entrée.
Focus on gross margin dollars, not just percentages — that’s what pays your rent and staff.
The ideal food cost formula is: Total Recipe Cost ÷ Number of Servings = Cost Per Serving, then Cost Per Serving ÷ Menu Price × 100 = Food Cost %. To reverse-engineer a menu price, divide your cost per serving by your target food cost percentage (e.g., $5.00 ÷ 0.30 = $16.67 suggested price at 30% food cost).
Waste percentage accounts for trim loss and prep waste — the portion of a purchased ingredient that doesn’t end up on the plate. For example, if you buy 1 lb of salmon but lose 15% to skin and bones, you need to buy more to get the same usable amount. The waste multiplier is 1 ÷ (1 − waste %), so 15% waste means you’re effectively paying 1.18× more per usable unit.
Traditional food cost only includes raw ingredient cost. However, the “fully-loaded” view — adding labor, packaging, and other costs — gives you a more complete picture of your true per-dish profitability. This is especially important for delivery and takeout menus where packaging costs can significantly impact margins.
Focus on your highest-cost ingredients first — they have the biggest impact. Strategies include negotiating better pricing with suppliers, reducing portion sizes slightly, using in-season ingredients, cross-utilizing expensive proteins across multiple dishes, and reducing prep waste through better knife skills and trim utilization. Even a 1–2% improvement in food cost can mean thousands in annual savings.
Food cost is just ingredients. Prime cost combines food cost and total labor cost — your two largest variable expenses. Most profitable restaurants keep prime cost between 55–65% of revenue. If your food cost is 30% and labor is 32%, your prime cost is 62%. Tracking both together gives you a better picture of overall profitability than either metric alone.