Free food cost calculator
Enter what you bought and how much one dish uses. Get the cost per portion, the food cost percentage and the price that fits your goal. No account needed.
Your dish, in numbers
- Ingredient cost per portion
- $1.79
- Food cost
- 17.9%
- Left after ingredients
- $8.21
- Price for a 30% food cost
- $5.97
Left after ingredients is gross food margin, not profit — labour, rent and overhead are not in it. Nothing you enter is saved.
How to calculate the cost of a dish
For each ingredient, divide what you paid by how much you bought to get a unit cost, then multiply by the amount one dish uses. Add every line, including sauces and garnishes, and divide by the number of portions the batch makes.
Line cost = buy price ÷ buy quantity × quantity used
Buying in one unit and using in another is where hand-built sheets go wrong. Five pounds is 2,267.96 grams, not 2,500, and a case written 6/5 lb is thirty pounds, not five. The calculator above converts exactly; for pack notation, the case price calculator reads it for you.
How to calculate food cost percentage
Take the ingredient cost of one portion. Divide it by the selling price, then multiply by 100.
Food cost % = ingredient cost ÷ selling price × 100
For example, a dish with $3 of ingredients sold for $10 has a 30% food cost. The remaining $7 still needs to cover labour, rent and other expenses.
Why can the suggested price be higher?
If ingredients cost $4 and you sell the dish for $10, ingredients take 40% of the sale. A 30% goal gives a price of about $13.33: $4 ÷ 0.30. The ingredients cost the same, but take a smaller share of the higher selling price.
You can also keep the $10 selling price and reduce ingredient costs to about $3. Your market, portions and other expenses matter when choosing a price.
Keep recipe costs up to date with MenuLedger
This calculator works on one dish at a time. MenuLedger connects supplier invoices to your ingredients and recipes, so confirmed purchases update your dish costs automatically.
Read the full recipe costing guideSee how MenuLedger tracks food costs