Food Cost & Menu Pricing Calculator
Cost any dish or drink from the packs you actually buy, and see the plate cost, food cost percentage, gross profit and a suggested menu price at your target food cost — with VAT handled correctly. Check an existing menu price against your target, see the same plate priced at 25% to 40% food cost, and turn weekly sales into the gross profit each dish really contributes. For restaurants, pubs, cafés, hotel kitchens, B&Bs and takeaways. Every figure is calculated deterministically from your inputs; nothing you enter is stored, published or indexed. Free, instant and no sign-up required. Tool built 21 September 2026.
What Is Food Cost and Why It Decides Whether a Kitchen Makes Money
Food cost is the ingredient cost of a dish expressed as a percentage of what it sells for, excluding VAT. It is the single number that connects the kitchen to the accounts: every point of food cost you save on a dish is a point of gross profit that goes towards wages, rent, energy and — eventually — profit. A restaurant, pub, café or hotel kitchen that does not know its plate costs is pricing by guesswork, and guesswork tends to drift the wrong way as supplier prices rise and portions grow. This calculator does the arithmetic properly: cost every ingredient from the pack you actually buy, add a waste allowance, divide by portions, and turn the plate cost into a food cost percentage, a gross profit figure and a suggested menu price at whatever target you set.
The Food Cost Formula
Plate Cost = Σ (Pack Cost ÷ Pack Size × Quantity Used) × (1 + Waste %) ÷ Portions. Food Cost % = Plate Cost ÷ Net Selling Price (ex VAT) × 100. Suggested Net Price = Plate Cost ÷ Target Food Cost %; Menu Price = Net Price × (1 + VAT). Take a worked example — an illustration, not a benchmark. A pub costs its chicken, chips and peas: 180 g of chicken breast from a 1 kg pack at £7.50 (£1.35), 200 g of chips from a 2.5 kg bag at £4.20 (£0.34) and 80 g of peas from a 1 kg bag at £1.80 (£0.14), plus oil, seasoning and garnish lines totalling £0.22. The ingredients come to £2.05; with a 5% waste allowance the plate cost is £2.15. At a 30% target the net price is £2.15 ÷ 0.30 = £7.17, or £8.60 with 20% VAT — £8.95 on the menu. If the dish is already listed at £12.95, its net price is £10.79, the food cost is 19.9% and it earns £8.64 of gross profit a plate; sell sixty a week and that is £518 a week or almost £27,000 a year from one line.
Costing a Recipe From Pack Prices
Professional recipe cards cost ingredients from the unit you buy, not the unit you use, and this calculator works the same way. For each line you enter the pack size, the pack cost and how much the recipe uses, all in one unit — grams for a kilo bag, millilitres for a litre bottle, “each” for eggs or buns. The calculator divides the pack cost by the pack size to get a unit cost and multiplies by the quantity used. Working this way has two advantages. First, it is honest: the £0.00168 a gram your chips actually cost is what goes into the plate, not a rounded guess. Second, it is maintainable: when a supplier changes a price you update one pack cost and every dish that uses that ingredient moves with it. Include the lines that kitchens forget — cooking oil, butter, seasoning, sauces, garnish, bread and the paper the chips arrive on — because across a busy week they add up to real money.
Waste, Trim and Yield
Raw weight is not plate weight. A whole salmon loses skin, bone and trim; potatoes lose peel; herbs wilt; sauces get over-ladled. There are two ways to allow for this. The precise way is to cost at yield — work out the cost per kilo of the usable product after trimming, and enter that as the pack cost. The practical way is to cost at raw weight and add a waste percentage across the whole recipe, which is what the waste field does. Between 3% and 10% is common, higher for fresh fish and butchery, lower for pre-prepared and frozen lines. Do not do both: if your pack costs are already yield-adjusted, set waste to zero or you will double-count and price yourself out of the market.
What Food Cost Percentage Should You Aim For?
There is no universal right answer, but there are well-worn working ranges. Full-service restaurants and food-led pubs typically run food costs between 28% and 35% of net sales, leaving 65–72% gross profit. Cafés and coffee shops can run lower overall because hot drinks carry very low ingredient costs, while steakhouses and fish restaurants often accept 35–40% on their headline dishes because the price points are high and the gross profit in pounds is still strong. Hotel restaurants frequently target the lower end because they carry more labour. Rather than adopting someone else’s number, set the target that makes your own profit and loss work: take your fixed costs and labour, add the profit you need, and the food cost you can afford falls out of the arithmetic. The Break-Even Calculator is built for exactly that step.
Food Cost Percentage vs Gross Profit in Pounds
Percentages are for comparing dishes; pounds are for paying bills. A soup with a 20% food cost that sells for £6.95 earns about £4.63 of gross profit; a steak at a 38% food cost that sells for £28.95 earns about £14.95. The steak has the “worse” percentage and contributes three times the cash. Menu engineering — the discipline of sorting dishes by popularity and by cash gross profit — treats the high-profit, high-volume “stars” as the dishes to protect and promote, and the low-profit, low-volume “dogs” as candidates for re-pricing, re-costing or removal. That is why the calculator asks for portions sold per week: the weekly and annual gross profit figures tell you which dishes are actually carrying the business, and the answer is often not the ones the kitchen is proudest of.
The VAT Trap
The most common mistake in menu pricing is measuring food cost against the price on the menu instead of the price you keep. In the UK, a VAT-registered business hands 20% of the net price to HMRC, so a £12.00 dish is really £10.00 of revenue. A plate costing £3.60 looks like a healthy 30% food cost against £12.00 but is actually 36% against £10.00 — six points of margin that do not exist. The calculator strips VAT out before every percentage, and adds it back when it suggests a menu price. If you are below the VAT threshold and not registered, select “No VAT” and the two prices are the same. Reduced or temporary rates can be entered if they ever apply to you.
Turning Plate Cost Into a Menu Price
Dividing plate cost by target food cost gives a mathematically correct price that rarely looks right on a menu. £8.60 becomes £8.95; £16.80 becomes £16.95; £23.10 becomes £23.45. The calculator’s “menu-friendly” price rounds up to the next .45 or .95 so the rounding never costs you margin. The target table shows the same plate priced at 25%, 28%, 30%, 32%, 35% and 40% food cost, which is the practical range for most menus. Use it to see what a dish would need to sell for to hit a stricter target, and be honest about whether guests will pay it. If they will not, the answer is to re-cost the dish — a cheaper cut, a smaller protein portion with a more generous garnish, a different supplier — rather than to accept a price that does not cover the kitchen.
Pricing a New Dish vs Checking an Existing One
Leave the current menu price blank and the calculator prices a new dish from your target. Enter a current price and it tells you the actual food cost percentage and gross profit at that price, how far above or below the target it sits, and the gap between today’s price and the suggested one. A dish running five or more points over target usually needs one of three things: a price increase, a portion or specification change, or a quiet exit from the menu. A dish running well under target with strong sales is a star — protect its quality, feature it and do not be tempted to cut its price.
Rising Ingredient Prices
Supplier prices move constantly, and a costing is only accurate on the day it was done. The “if ingredient prices rose 10%” figure shows what the food cost would become at your current or suggested price if every line went up by a tenth — the difference between a dish that drifts from 30% to 33% and one that jumps from 38% to 42%. Dishes where a single ingredient makes up most of the cost — the biggest cost line is shown in the results — are the most exposed to a price spike in that one product. Re-cost your top twenty sellers at least quarterly, and immediately when a key supplier issues a new price list.
Drinks, Cocktails and Coffee
The same method costs anything sold by the measure. Enter a 70 cl spirit bottle as 700 ml, its cost, and the 50 ml pour; add mixers, garnish and ice as lines. Coffee is a pack of beans, the grams per shot, milk by the millilitre and the cup and lid if you sell takeaway. Wet sales typically run much lower food (or “liquor”) cost percentages than food — often 20–30% for wine and spirits and far lower for coffee — which is why a wet-led pub can survive a higher food cost on its kitchen and why cafés live or die on drink volume.
Using Food Cost When Buying or Selling a Hospitality Business
Buyers of restaurants, pubs and cafés should re-cost the top-selling dishes on the current menu before they make an offer. If the accounts show a gross profit of 68% but the plates cost out at 40% food cost, either the accounts are wrong, the supplier prices have moved, or the kitchen is not following its own specifications — all of which affect what the business is worth. Sellers should do the same before going to market: a menu with documented recipe costings and a gross profit that stands up to scrutiny is far easier to sell, and the Exit Readiness Score treats exactly that kind of documentation as a mark of a sale-ready business.
Limitations of This Calculator
The calculator costs what you tell it to cost. It does not know current market prices, does not include labour, rent, energy, packaging, delivery-platform commission or card fees, and does not model the sales mix across a whole menu, so a target that works on paper for one dish may not deliver the gross profit the business needs overall. The suggested price is a cost-plus figure, not a statement of what guests will pay in your location. Treat the output as the foundation of a recipe card and a menu pricing decision, and pair it with the business-level tools below before committing to a menu.
Related Stay4Hospitality Tools
Plate-level gross profit is the first step; the rest of the P&L is the next. Roll dish margins into a whole-business forecast with the Profit Predictor, find how many covers pay the bills with the Break-Even Calculator, plan the kitchen and front-of-house wage bill with the Staff Cost Planner, and manage the monthly cash position with the Cash Flow Forecast. Opening a new venue? Build the plan with the Business Plan Generator. And if you are looking to buy a food and drink business, browse restaurants for sale and pubs for sale on Stay4Hospitality — or, if you are ready to sell yours, list it here and present it directly to buyers.
How do you calculate food cost percentage?
Divide the ingredient cost of the dish by its selling price excluding VAT, then multiply by 100. A plate that costs £4.20 in ingredients and sells for £14.95 including 20% VAT has a net price of £12.46, so its food cost is £4.20 ÷ £12.46 = 33.7%. Always use the net price — using the VAT-inclusive price makes every dish look 20% more profitable than it is.
What is a good food cost percentage for a restaurant or pub?
Most full-service restaurants and pubs work to a food cost between 28% and 35% of net sales, which leaves a gross profit of 65% to 72% to pay for labour, rent, energy and profit. Cafés and coffee shops often run lower food costs on drinks and pastries; fine dining and steak-led menus often run higher on food but recover it on volume and drinks. The right target is the one that makes your own P&L work, which is why the calculator lets you set it.
How do I work out a menu price from food cost?
Divide the plate cost by your target food cost expressed as a decimal to get the net price, then add VAT. A £4.20 plate at a 30% target is £4.20 ÷ 0.30 = £14.00 net, or £16.80 with 20% VAT — which most operators would put on the menu at £16.95. The calculator does this for your target and for a range of alternatives.
What is the difference between food cost and gross profit?
They are two ways of describing the same split. If food cost is 30% of the net price, gross profit (GP) is the other 70%. Kitchens tend to talk in food cost percentages; accountants and pub companies tend to talk in GP percentages. Gross profit in pounds — the net price minus the plate cost — is what actually pays the bills, and a dish with a higher food cost percentage can still make more cash GP if its price is higher.
Should menu prices include VAT when calculating food cost?
No. VAT belongs to HMRC, not to you, so it must come off the menu price before you compare it with ingredient costs. If you are not VAT registered, select the no-VAT option and the menu price and net price are the same.
How do I cost an ingredient I buy in bulk?
Enter the pack size, the pack cost and the amount the recipe uses, all in the same unit. A 2.5 kg bag of chips at £4.20 entered as 2500 g gives a unit cost of £0.00168 per gram, so a 200 g portion costs £0.34. This is the same method used on professional recipe cards, and it means a supplier price change only needs updating in one place.
What waste percentage should I allow?
Between 3% and 10% is common, depending on how much fresh trimming, portioning by eye and spoilage your menu involves. If you have already costed using trimmed yields — for example the cost per kilo of peeled potatoes rather than raw — set waste to zero to avoid counting it twice.
Does the food cost include labour and overheads?
No. Food cost covers ingredients only. Labour, rent, energy, packaging, card fees and marketing are paid for out of the gross profit that remains, which is why the target food cost has to be low enough to leave room for them. The Profit Predictor and Break-Even Calculator take the gross profit from this tool and show whether the whole business covers its costs.
Why does my food cost keep creeping up even though prices have not changed?
Usually one of four things: supplier prices have risen since the dish was costed, portions have grown, waste has increased, or the sales mix has shifted towards lower-margin dishes. Re-cost your best sellers every quarter and whenever a key supplier changes its price list — the 'if prices rose 10%' figure shows how exposed each dish is.
Can I use this for drinks, cocktails or a whole menu?
Yes for individual drinks and cocktails — enter each spirit, mixer and garnish as a line just like a food ingredient, with the bottle as the pack. For a whole menu, cost each dish separately and record the results; the weekly gross profit figure lets you rank dishes by the cash they contribute, which is the starting point for menu engineering.
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