Common Food Yield Percentages: A Working Chart
These are working approximations for common ingredients, gathered from standard culinary references and real kitchens. Your spec, knife work, and vendor trim will move them — treat this as a starting point and run your own yield tests on anything you buy in volume.
Produce
- Broccoli (crowns → florets): ~61%
- Cauliflower: ~55%
- Carrots, peeled: ~80%
- Yellow onions: ~88%
- Potatoes, peeled: ~81%
- Celery: ~75%
- Bell peppers, cored and seeded: ~82%
- Romaine, trimmed and cored: ~75%
- Tomatoes, cored: ~90%
- Butternut squash, peeled and seeded: ~65%
- Fresh herbs, stemmed: ~50–60%
Proteins
- Whole chicken → boneless usable meat: ~55%
- Beef tenderloin, peeled from whole PSMO: ~75%
- Salmon, whole → skin-on fillet: ~55%
- Shrimp, shell-on → peeled and deveined: ~85%
- Pork shoulder → cooked pulled pork: ~55–60% (cook loss included)
How to use these numbers
Divide the invoice price by the yield (as a decimal) to get the true cost of what you serve: $2.00/lb ÷ 0.61 = $3.28/lb. Then cost recipes with the true number, not the invoice number. The free yield calculator does both steps; Freecost stores a yield on every ingredient and applies it to every recipe automatically.
A note on cook loss: yields here are trim yields unless noted. If your recipe portions by cooked weight (pulled pork, roasted vegetables), test the full raw-to-served yield — cooking can cost you another 20–30%.