Recipe cost calculator — from pack price to menu price
What does a serving cost, and what should the menu price be?
This example dish costs $0.47 a serving. A 30% food-cost target prices it at $1.55, a $5.50 contribution target at $5.97, and at the chosen menu price of $4.50 the food cost comes to 10.3529%.
Any currency, any country — this is pure arithmetic, with no tax or legal constants anywhere.
Enter what you buy and what the recipe uses. Every line is costed as-purchased to edible-portion through the yield you measured; unit conversions inside one dimension are exact NIST definitions, and weight-to-volume honestly asks for your own measured factor instead of inventing a density.
Ingredients — as bought and as used
One row per ingredient. The pack is what you pay for; the yield is the share that actually reaches the plate after peeling, trimming and shrink — measure your own, because your trim is not an average.
† When the pack and the recipe measure in different dimensions — a pack by weight, a recipe line by volume — no honest table can convert them: density is a property of your ingredient. Measure it once (how many pack units one recipe unit of it actually is) and enter that; lines that used your factor are marked †.
The dish
The Q-factor is the cost of what rides along with every plate — bread, garnish, packaging. Leave it empty for none. The currency symbol is display only: it never enters the arithmetic.
Pricing
Path A divides cost per serving by your target food-cost percent; path B adds your target contribution margin on top of cost. The chosen-price line then shows what you actually achieve at the number that ends up on the menu — menus price at what reads well, and the calculator prices from your chosen figure, not the theoretical one.
What this dish costs — and returns
At your menu price of $4.50: food cost 10.3529%, contribution margin $4.03 per serving, margin 89.6471% of price, markup 865.9124% on cost.
Margin is not markup: from the same 30%, pricing by margin gives $0.67 while pricing by markup gives $0.61 — two different amounts, worked out on your own numbers.
Line by line
| Ingredient | Cost per recipe unit (edible portion) | Line cost |
|---|---|---|
| Onion | $0.001023 | $0.41 |
| Butter | $0.007937 | $0.40 |
| Salt | $0.007200 † | $0.06 |
| Whole batch | — | $0.86 |
| Per serving, incl. Q-factor | — | $0.47 |
Exact figures before rounding: batch $0.863523, per serving $0.465881.
How it works
- Each line is priced per pack unit, converted to your recipe unit — exactly within one dimension using NIST definitions, or through your own measured factor across dimensions — then divided by the yield: paying for the peel is the part free templates skip.
- Line costs are summed into the batch; the batch is divided by servings and the Q-factor is added, giving the cost per serving.
- Path A computes price as cost divided by your target food-cost percent; path B as cost plus your target contribution margin. Both are shown side by side because they answer different questions.
- At your chosen price the calculator reports the achieved food cost, the contribution margin, the margin as a share of price and the markup as a share of cost — and shows why margin and markup from the same percent are different prices.
- One dish at a time. Batch preps used inside other dishes (sub-recipes), the menu-mix engineering of a whole menu and an ingredient price-watch live in the full workbook, not here.
- No density table: converting weight to volume takes the ingredient’s own measured factor, entered by you. A hidden “one cup equals so many grams” row would be a guess about your flour.
- No benchmark percentages. The food-cost target is yours; industry folklore is not printed here as fact.
- No reference yields. The yield column is your own measurement — an empty cell beats a borrowed average.
- Menu prices may need sales tax or VAT added depending on your jurisdiction; no tax of any kind is modelled.
Unit definitions: NIST Handbook 44, Appendix C, captured with source and date. Menu-engineering methodology is cited on the workbook, where it applies.
This is arithmetic on the numbers you enter, not business, pricing or tax advice. Runs in your browser; nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere.
The whole menu, priced the same honest way
The workbook adds batch preps as first-class rows, the menu-mix classification of every dish from your own sales counts, an ingredient price-watch that names which dishes each increase hits hardest, and printed sources for every constant.
See the recipe cost & menu pricing spreadsheet — $15rcp.faq_h
Why does the calculator ask for a yield percent per ingredient?
Because you pay for the as-purchased weight but serve the edible portion: an onion is peeled, a fillet is trimmed. Costing at invoice price with one global waste row understates every line differently; a per-ingredient yield puts the loss where it happens. Measure your own — trim varies by supplier, season and knife.
Why won’t it convert cups to grams by itself?
Because that conversion is the ingredient’s density, not a unit definition. A cup of flour and a cup of honey weigh very different amounts, and any hidden table would be a guess about your ingredient. Conversions inside one dimension — weight to weight, volume to volume — are exact NIST definitions; across dimensions the calculator asks for your own measured factor and marks the line honestly.
What is the difference between margin and markup?
Margin is profit as a share of the selling price; markup is profit as a share of the cost. The same percent gives two different prices — a price built from a markup always sits below one built from the same margin, and the gap widens as the percent grows. The calculator computes both from your own numbers and names each one.
Is anything I type stored?
No. The arithmetic runs in your browser on this page; nothing is uploaded, stored or sent anywhere. Reloading the page returns the worked example.
