Free tool for restaurants

What does each plate really cost you?

Most menus are priced on a guess and a feeling. Answer a few quick questions, and we'll build a costing workbook set up for your kitchen. Fill it in, upload it, and get a true plate cost, food cost % and a suggested price for every dish.

Already have a workbook from us? Upload it to pick up where you left off.

Trim and shrink

A kilo of whole chicken isn't a kilo on the plate. If you cost the purchase weight, every trimmed or cooked-down item is cheaper on paper than in real life.

The things nobody measures

Fryer oil, salt, the garnish, the lemon wedge, the takeout container. A small Q-factor puts them back on the plate where they belong.

Prices creep

A few cents a kilo every invoice adds up. Costing once and updating prices is the only way to know which dishes have quietly stopped paying their way.

How plate cost is calculated

The calculator and the workbook use the same four formulas, so the spreadsheet and the results agree to the cent. AI writes the questions and the summary; it never does the arithmetic.

  1. Cost per usable unit = purchase price ÷ (quantity bought × usable yield)
  2. Line cost = amount used in the recipe × cost per usable unit
  3. Plate cost = sum of line costs ÷ portions the recipe makes × (1 + Q-factor)
  4. Suggested price = plate cost ÷ target food cost percentage, rounded up to your price ending

Worked example: lemon garlic chicken, one portion

Plate cost for one portion, 4% Q-factor, 30% target food cost
IngredientBoughtUsable yieldCost per usable unitUsedLine cost
Chicken thigh10 kg case, $68.0092%$7.39 / kg220 g$1.63
Rice1 kg, $3.20100%$3.20 / kg150 g$0.48
Green beans1 kg, $5.5085%$6.47 / kg120 g$0.78
Lemon garlic sauce (sub-recipe)Batch–$0.90 / portion1 portion$0.90
Ingredients$3.78
Plate cost with 4% Q-factor ($3.78 × 1.04)$3.93
Suggested price at 30% food cost ($3.93 ÷ 0.30)$13.11
Food cost at a $16.00 menu price ($3.93 ÷ $16.00)24.6%

Costing the chicken by its invoice price ($6.80 / kg) instead of its usable cost would understate it by about 8%. On a menu of 30 dishes, that gap is why prices drift below target without anyone noticing.

Questions owners ask

Work out what each ingredient really costs per usable gram or millilitre: purchase price ÷ (quantity bought × usable yield). Multiply by the amount used in the dish, add up the lines, divide by the number of portions the recipe makes, then add a Q-factor of 2 to 5 percent for oil, salt and garnish that nobody measures.

Divide the plate cost by the menu price and multiply by 100. A plate that costs $3.93 to make and sells for $16 has a food cost of 24.6 percent. To get a price from a target, divide the plate cost by the target: $3.93 ÷ 0.30 = $13.11 for a 30 percent target.

Yes. It's a free tool from Menu2Website. We ask for your email before showing results so we can link them to you; you can choose whether you'd like tips and news.

It depends on your concept. Many full-service restaurants aim for 28 to 35 percent; cafés and bars often run lower on drinks and higher on food. Use your own target: the tool works with whatever number you set, and you can change it any time on the Settings tab.

No. Your workbook is analyzed when you upload it, and the copies we generate for download are deleted after a couple of hours. To word your questions and write your summary, the relevant rows are sent to our AI provider. Your session details travel inside the workbook itself, which is how you can come back later and pick up where you left off.

Yes. Open the workbook, fill it in, then download or export it as an Excel .xlsx file and upload that. Some apps drop the hidden tab that remembers your session; if so, we start fresh from your Settings tab and nothing else is lost.

A small percentage added to every plate for the things that never get measured: cooking oil, salt and pepper, garnish, the lemon wedge. Two to five percent is typical.

The share of what you buy that ends up on the plate. If a 10 kg case of chicken thighs gives you 9.2 kg after trimming, the yield is 92 percent, and every usable gram costs a little more than the invoice suggests.