Food Cost Calculator
Work out what a recipe costs to make, what each serving costs, and what to charge. No signup, nothing to install.
How to calculate food cost
Food cost is what the ingredients in a dish actually cost you. Work it out in four steps.
1. Price each ingredient as you buy it
Write down the pack size and what you paid. A 2 kg bag of flour at $4.20 is your unit of purchase — not the 500 g the recipe calls for.
2. Convert to the amount the recipe uses
Divide the purchase price by the pack size to get a price per gram, millilitre, or unit. Multiply that by the quantity the recipe uses. The calculator above does this for you, including unit conversion within weight or within volume.
3. Add it up and divide by yield
Total every ingredient to get the recipe cost, then divide by the number of servings the recipe produces. That gives you cost per serving.
4. Apply your target food cost percentage
Divide cost per serving by your target food cost percentage to get a price. At a 30% target, a serving costing $1.50 prices at $5.00. Food service commonly aims for 28–35%; packaged goods often run lower because packaging, labour, and shipping sit outside the food cost figure.
What this number does not include
Food cost is ingredients only. Labour, packaging, overhead, waste, and shipping are real costs and none of them appear here. Treat the suggested price as a floor to reason from, not a final answer.
Food cost, answered
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What is a good food cost percentage?
Most food service operations target 28–35%. Below that and you may be underspending on ingredients in a way customers notice; well above it and margin gets thin. Packaged and CPG products are usually lower, because packaging, labour, and fulfilment are counted separately.
How do I convert between cups and grams?
You cannot, without knowing the ingredient. A cup of flour and a cup of honey weigh very different amounts, because conversion between volume and weight depends on density. This calculator converts within weight (g, kg, oz, lb) and within volume (ml, l, tsp, tbsp, cup, fl oz, qt, gal), and tells you when a row mixes the two rather than returning a number that looks right and is not.
Does food cost include labour and packaging?
No. Food cost covers ingredients only. Labour, packaging, overhead, and shipping are separate lines. A dish can hit a healthy food cost percentage and still lose money once those are counted, so use this figure as one input rather than the whole picture.
How do I account for waste and trim?
Enter the quantity you actually buy to produce the recipe, not the quantity that ends up in the dish. If you buy a whole fish and use half of it, price the whole fish. Yield loss is a real cost and hiding it makes the number optimistic.
Is the calculator free?
Yes. It runs entirely in your browser, there is no signup, and nothing you type is sent anywhere or stored.
Still have questions?
Talk to the founderYou'll often hear back directly from Patrick, the founder.
Recipes that cost well should sell well
Recipe Kit turns your recipes into shoppable pages on your Shopify store — with the ingredients linked to the products you sell.