Food Cost Percentage Calculator
Enter what a dish costs you to make and what you charge for it — get your food cost percentage, your gross profit per plate, and an honest verdict.
Enter what a dish costs you to make and what you charge for it — get your food cost percentage, your gross profit per plate, and an honest verdict.
Enter both numbers to see your food cost percentage.
Food cost % = (plate cost ÷ menu price) × 100
Plate cost is the total cost of every ingredient that goes on the plate — the protein, the sides, the garnish, the oil it was cooked in. Menu price is what the guest pays before tax and tip.
A chicken sandwich: $1.85 of chicken, $0.55 bun, $0.40 sauce and pickles, $0.90 of fries — a plate cost of $3.70. It sells for $12.95.
3.70 ÷ 12.95 × 100 = 28.6% food cost, leaving $9.25 of gross profit per sandwich to cover labor, rent, and everything else.
The formula is easy. The hard part is the plate cost being true: invoice prices change weekly, and trim loss means a pound purchased is not a pound served. A dish costed once in January is fiction by June. That drift — not the arithmetic — is why kitchens use costing software.
Food cost percentage = (cost of the ingredients on the plate ÷ menu price) × 100. If a burger costs you $4.20 to make and sells for $14.00, your food cost is 4.20 ÷ 14.00 × 100 = 30%.
Most full-service restaurants target 28–35%. Quick-service concepts often run lower (25–30%), steakhouses and seafood concepts higher (35–40%). The right number depends on your concept — what matters is knowing yours and catching it when it drifts.
No. A dish at 40% food cost that sells 50 times a night can make you more money than a 20% dish that sells twice. Food cost percentage is a guardrail, not a goal — you bank dollars, not percentages.
Yield-adjusted. If broccoli is $2.00/lb on the invoice but you trim away 39% of it, the broccoli that reaches the plate really costs about $3.28/lb. Costing with invoice prices quietly understates every vegetable and protein on your menu.
Freecost keeps every recipe costed against your live ingredient prices — snap an invoice with your phone and every affected dish updates itself.
Start free — no credit cardFreecost is free recipe-costing software built by a chef. Web + Android.