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Menu price calculator with the food cost worked out for you
This free menu price calculator works out what a dish costs you to plate and what to charge for it. Add each ingredient, set a target food cost percentage, and you get the menu price, the gross profit per plate and the margin. It also works backwards from a price you already charge. No sign-up, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
The example is a chicken shawarma plate. Change any number and the price updates as you type, or start a blank dish and enter your own costs.
The numbers for Chicken shawarma plate
- Plate cost
- $2.37
- Menu price
- $8.00
- Exact price before rounding
- $7.89
- Food cost
- 29.6%
- Gross profit per plate
- $5.63
- Gross margin
- 70.4%
Where the plate cost goes
- Chicken thigh, boneless$1.38 · 58%
- Pita bread$0.24 · 10%
- Fries$0.30 · 13%
- Garlic sauce$0.16 · 7%
- Pickles and tomato$0.20 · 8%
- Spice mix and oil$0.09 · 4%
Worked out in your browser. Nothing you type here is sent to tamr or saved, and there is no sign-up.
The food cost formula is plate cost ÷ menu price × 100. Three more go with it: plate cost itself, the menu price from a target percentage, and gross profit with its margin. A food cost calculator is these four sums in a row, and you can do every one of them on a phone.
1Plate cost
pack price ÷ pack size × amount used ÷ yield
Do this for every ingredient on the plate and add the lines up.
Chicken: $6.50 ÷ 1,000 g × 180 g ÷ 0.85 = $1.38. All six lines: $2.37.
2Food cost percentage
plate cost ÷ menu price × 100
The share of the price that pays for the ingredients.
$2.37 ÷ $8.00 × 100 = 29.6%.
3Menu price from a target
plate cost ÷ target food cost
Write the target as a decimal: 30% is 0.30.
$2.37 ÷ 0.30 = $7.89, rounded up to $8.00.
4Gross profit and margin
menu price − plate cost
Divide the profit by the price for the margin. Margin and food cost always add up to 100%.
$8.00 − $2.37 = $5.63 a plate, a 70.4% margin.
A chicken shawarma plate with six ingredients costs $2.37 to put on the pass. At a 30% target the exact price is $7.89. Rounded up to $8.00, the food cost is 29.6% and each plate leaves $5.63 of gross profit.
The chicken is more than half the plate
One line carries most of the cost. When chicken goes up 10%, this plate goes up about 6%, and the other five lines barely matter.
Yield changes the answer
180 g of thigh at 85% yield costs what 212 g costs on the invoice. Costing it at 100% would undercost the plate by about 20 cents.
Chicken shawarma plate
Costing sheet for one plate
- Chicken thigh, boneless180 g at $6.50 per kg, 85% yield$1.38
- Pita bread2 pieces at 10 for $1.20$0.24
- Fries150 g at $5.00 per 2.5 kg$0.30
- Garlic sauce40 g at $4.00 per kg$0.16
- Pickles and tomato60 g at $3.00 per kg, 90% yield$0.20
- Spice mix and oil10 g at $9.00 per kg$0.09
- Plate cost
- $2.37
- Divided by a 30% target
- $7.89
- Rounded up to the next 0.50
- $8.00
Menu price
$8.00
Food cost
29.6%
Profit a plate
$5.63
Switch the calculator to "My food cost", type the price on your menu, and it shows the food cost percentage that price gives you today. Use it to audit a menu you inherited or one you have not recosted since your suppliers raised prices. The same plate at $6.50 runs a 36.4% food cost. At $9.50 it runs 24.9%.
Start with your ten best sellers
They carry most of your food spend, so a few points on them move the month more than the rest of the menu together.
Then sort the menu by profit and popularity
Food cost tells you about one dish. Menu engineering compares all of them.
Same plate, three prices
Plate cost $2.37 every time
- $6.5036.4% food cost
$4.13 gross profit a plate, above a 30% target
- $8.0029.6% food cost
$5.63 gross profit a plate
- $9.5024.9% food cost
$7.13 gross profit a plate
Most restaurants aim for a food cost between 28% and 35% of sales. Concepts built on cheap staples, like pizza, run lower. Concepts built on expensive proteins run higher and make it back on a bigger price per plate. Treat these as ranges to check yourself against. They are not rules.
Pizza
20% to 28%
Dough, sauce and cheese are cheap for the price a pizza carries.
Quick service and fast casual
25% to 32%
Short menus, tight portions and high volume keep it low.
Casual full service
28% to 35%
Wider menus and bigger plates. Most restaurants sit in this band.
Fine dining and steakhouses
32% to 40%
Expensive proteins. A high price per plate still leaves good profit in money.
Rule-of-thumb ranges quoted across restaurant industry guides, for food only. Published figures differ by a few points from one source to the next, and drinks are costed separately. Use them to sanity-check a number, then trust your own invoices.
A menu cost calculator covers ingredients and nothing else. The gross profit it shows still has to pay for staff, rent and energy, and the maths cannot tell you whether anyone will pay the price. Use the result as the lowest sensible price, then judge it against these.
Labour
A dish that takes one cook ten minutes costs more than its ingredients say. Many operators watch food and labour together as one number, prime cost.
Rent and overheads
Rent, power, gas, water and licences come out of gross profit. A 70% margin on the plate is not a 70% profit.
What customers will pay
If the street pays $7 for a shawarma plate, $8 needs a reason. If it pays $10, pricing from cost leaves money behind.
Delivery commissions and packaging
A delivery order pays the platform its commission and needs a box and a bag. Cost delivery dishes as their own lines.
Waste you cannot see on the plate
Spoilage, over-portioning and staff meals sit outside a recipe costing. Your real food cost for the month will be above the theoretical one.
Prices that move
A costing is right on the day you do it. Recost when a main ingredient moves, and the whole menu at least every three months.
Always round, and round up. An exact price like $7.89 looks like a mistake on a menu, and rounding down means missing your target on every plate you sell. Pick one ending for the whole menu, such as .00 and .50, and move each price up to the next one.
Keep one style across the menu
Whole numbers suit a sit-down menu. .50 steps suit a counter. Mixing .95, .50 and .00 on one page reads as careless.
Round bigger in currencies with large numbers
If you price in Lebanese pounds, round to the next 1,000 or more. The calculator has steps from 0.25 up to 1,000.
Round after VAT, not before
Where menu prices include VAT, the price the customer reads is the one that should look clean. The calculator rounds that one.
Chicken shawarma plate, plate cost $2.37
- Exact price30.0% food cost
$7.89
Hits 30% exactly, and looks like a typo on a menu.
- Rounded down31.6% food cost
$7.50
Misses the target on every plate sold.
- Rounded up29.6% food cost
$8.00
Clean on the menu, and under the target.
Rounding up adds $0.11 a plate. Over 1,000 plates that is $112 of gross profit.
A calculator tells you what a dish should cost. It cannot tell you which dishes your customers notice. tamr puts your menu on a QR code with an AI waiter inside, and its dashboard shows which dishes customers looked at, which they picked and what they asked. tamr does not see your sales or your margins, so the two work side by side.
Find the dish nobody sees
A high-margin dish that few customers open is worth moving up the menu before you touch its price.
Change a price in the editor
Edit a price and your published menu updates within about 30 seconds. Nothing to reprint.
How do you calculate the price of a menu item?
Add up what every ingredient on the plate costs you, then divide that plate cost by your target food cost percentage. A plate that costs $2.37 with a 30% target comes to $2.37 ÷ 0.30 = $7.89, which you would round up to $8.00. Then check that price against what your customers will pay and what nearby restaurants charge.
What is the food cost formula?
Food cost percentage = plate cost ÷ menu price × 100. A dish that costs $2.37 to plate and sells for $8.00 has a food cost of 29.6%. To go the other way, menu price = plate cost ÷ target food cost percentage, with the target written as a decimal, so 30% is 0.30.
What is a good food cost percentage for a restaurant?
Most restaurants aim for 28% to 35% across the whole menu. Pizza and quick service often run lower, around 20% to 32%, and fine dining and steakhouses run higher, around 32% to 40%. These are rules of thumb, and one dish can sit outside the band if the menu as a whole lands where you need it.
Is the menu price calculator free?
Yes. It is free with no sign-up, no email and no limit on how many dishes you price. It runs in your browser, so the ingredient costs you type are never sent to tamr and are not saved. If you close the page, the numbers are gone.
What is yield, and why does it change the plate cost?
Yield is the share of an ingredient you buy that reaches the plate after trimming, peeling and cooking. If 1 kg of chicken thigh gives you 850 g of cooked meat, the yield is 85%, and each gram on the plate costs more than the invoice price suggests. Skipping yield is the most common way a plate cost comes out too low.
Should a menu price include VAT?
It depends on how prices are shown where you trade. If your menu shows prices with VAT included, work out food cost on the price before VAT, because the tax is not your revenue. Switch on the VAT option, type your rate, and the calculator shows the menu price with VAT and the food cost on the net price. Check the current rate with your accountant.
Does the calculator include labour and rent?
No. It covers ingredients only, which is what food cost means. Labour, rent, energy, packaging and delivery commissions are paid out of the gross profit that is left. That is why a dish at a 30% food cost is not earning a 70% profit: the 70% still has to pay for everything else.
How often should I recalculate menu prices?
Recost a dish whenever a main ingredient changes price by more than a few percent, and go through the whole menu at least every three months. Proteins, cooking oil, dairy and imported goods move the most. Keep one costing per dish so that you only need to change the pack price to see the new food cost.
Menu engineering
Sort every dish by profit and popularity, and what to do with each group.
Menu analytics
Which dishes customers looked at, picked and asked about.
Digital menu
Your menu on your customers' phones, with prices you can change any time.
PDF menu to QR code
Turn a hosted PDF menu into a printable QR code, free.
Upload your menu as a PDF or a photo, or import it from a link. tamr builds it, and your customers can read it and ask the AI waiter tonight. Free to start, no card.
