Recipe Cost Calculator
Turn total ingredient cost into cost per serving, and into a selling price at your target food cost percentage.
What you need
$3.00
Ingredient cost per serving
- Suggested price per serving
- $10.00
- Price for the whole batch
- $40.00
- Profit per serving
- $7.00
- Gross margin
- 70%
At your target food cost percentage.
Selling price less every cost you entered. Negative means the target food cost is too high for this dish.
Guide figures. Ingredient weights, pan sizes and cooking times all vary — see the assumptions below for the ones used.
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Costing is only as good as the weights behind it, which means a scale rather than cups. Quantities come straight from your calculation above — check them against your supplier's pack sizes before ordering.
Prep & extras
Mixing bowls
A scaled-up batch needs more room than the original bowl has.
Tools & equipment
Digital kitchen scale
Weighing removes the cup-packing variable entirely, which is the single biggest accuracy win in baking.
Measuring spoons
For the awkward amounts a scaled recipe lands on.
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How to use the recipe cost calculator
Costing a dish is two separate sums. The first is what it costs you, which is ingredients plus your time plus a share of overheads. The second is what to charge, which in food is conventionally set by food cost percentage — the ingredient cost as a share of the price. Enter your totals for both.
Two different questions
What a dish costs and what to charge for it are separate calculations, and conflating them is where most food pricing goes wrong. Cost is arithmetic: ingredients, time, a share of overheads. Price is a market question, and the food cost percentage convention is a shortcut for answering it — a way of pricing that has historically left enough room for everything else.
That is why the suggested price here comes from ingredient cost alone while the profit line accounts for everything. The percentage sets the price; the margin tells you whether that price actually works for this particular dish.
Where the percentage breaks down
Food cost percentage assumes labour is roughly proportional to ingredient cost. For most restaurant dishes it approximately is, which is why the convention has survived. It fails badly at the extremes: laminated pastry is hours of work over pennies of flour and butter, and a dressed crab is expensive ingredients and minutes of work.
For those, price on total cost plus the margin you need rather than on a percentage. The tell is exactly the negative profit line above — when the percentage gives a price that does not cover the work, the percentage is the wrong tool for that dish.
What this calculator assumes
Every estimate depends on figures that vary by supplier and conditions. These are the ones used here, so you can sanity-check the result against your own quote.
- Food cost percentage is ingredient cost divided by selling price, which is the industry convention. A 30% target on $3 of ingredients gives a $10 price. It is a pricing heuristic, not a profit calculation.
- The suggested price is derived from ingredient cost alone, deliberately. That is how the convention works — labour and overhead are what the remaining 70% is there to cover, along with profit.
- Labour is your stated hours at your stated rate, applied to the whole batch. It does not scale with servings, which is the main reason cooking in larger batches improves margin.
- The overhead uplift is applied as a percentage of ingredient cost. This is the standard shortcut for salt, oil, gas, packaging and other items too small to itemise — real commercial overhead allocation is more involved.
- Nothing here accounts for waste, spoilage, staff meals, comped dishes or portions that come out wrong. Commercial kitchens typically budget several percent for those, and a busy one considerably more.
- Profit per serving can come out negative. That is a real answer, not an error: it means the price your target food cost implies does not cover your time, and either the target or the recipe has to change.
- Sales tax, delivery commissions and payment fees are excluded. Platform commissions in particular are large enough — often 20 to 30% — to invalidate a price set without them.
Frequently asked questions
How do I calculate food cost percentage?
Divide the ingredient cost by the selling price and multiply by 100. A dish with $3 of ingredients sold for $12 has a 25% food cost. Run backwards, dividing ingredient cost by your target percentage gives the price — which is what this calculator does.
What is a good food cost percentage?
Most restaurants target 25 to 35%, and the range within that is driven by the format. Pizza and pasta run low, around 20 to 25%, because the ingredients are cheap relative to what people will pay. Steak and seafood run high, 35 to 45%, and make it back on volume and drinks. A home baker selling direct has no rent to cover and can work lower.
Should I include my own labour?
Yes, if you are selling. Leaving your time out is the most common reason a small food business looks profitable and is not — it hides a wage you are quietly paying yourself out of the margin. Fill in the optional fields and look at profit per serving rather than at food cost percentage alone.
Why is my profit per serving negative?
Because the price your food cost target implies does not cover your time and overheads for this dish. It usually means the recipe is labour-heavy relative to its ingredient cost — an intricate pastry with cheap ingredients is the classic case. Either raise the price above what the percentage suggests, or make the dish in bigger batches so the labour spreads further.
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