Recipe Costing Calculator
Cost a dish properly, pack price to plate, with yields and VAT handled the way your P&L handles them.
Enter each ingredient as you buy it, pack cost and pack size, then how much the dish uses. Yield is the usable proportion after trim, peel and cooking loss.
Cost a batch and divide it down. Set 1 if the quantities above are for a single plate.
What the customer pays.
20% eat-in and hot takeaway. Cold takeaway food is often zero-rated.
Used for the suggested menu price.
Spoilage, comps and mistakes beyond ingredient yield. Applied to the finished plate cost.
Only used to show what the dish contributes over a week.
| Ingredient | Pack cost £ | Pack size | Qty used | Yield % | Line cost | Remove |
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How the costing works
For each ingredient line:
- Cost per unit = pack cost ÷ pack size
- Usable cost per unit = cost per unit ÷ yield %
- Line cost = usable cost per unit × quantity used
Then across the dish:
- Plate cost = (sum of line costs ÷ portions) ÷ (1 − kitchen wastage %)
- Net sales = menu price ÷ (1 + VAT rate)
- GP % = (net sales − plate cost) ÷ net sales
A worked example
Take the short rib line as it is seeded above: a 5kg pack at £68.00, using 320g, at 62% yield.
- Cost per gram = £68.00 ÷ 5000 = £0.0136
- Usable cost per gram = £0.0136 ÷ 0.62 = £0.02194
- Line cost = £0.02194 × 320 = £7.02
Costed at the pack price with no yield, the same line reads £4.35. On one ingredient, in one dish, that is £2.67 of margin that exists on the recipe card and nowhere else.
Common questions
What is the difference between yield and wastage here?
Yield is per ingredient and structural. You buy 1kg of short rib and 620g survives trimming and cooking, so the usable cost per gram is higher than the pack price suggests. Wastage is per plate and behavioural, spoilage, comps, dropped plates, over-portioning.
They are separate because you fix them differently. Poor yield is a spec, butchery or supplier question. High wastage is a training and portion-control question.
Why divide by yield instead of adding a percentage?
Because you have to buy enough to end up with what the dish needs. At 62% yield, 320g on the plate means buying 320 ÷ 0.62 = 516g. Adding 38% would give 442g, and you would be short, and your costs would look better than they are.
This is the single most common arithmetic error in recipe costing, and it always errs in the flattering direction.
Should pack size be in grams, millilitres or units?
Whatever you like, as long as pack size and quantity used are in the same unit on that row. A 5kg pack entered as 5000 with 320 used is grams. A 12-unit case entered as 12 with 1 used is units. Rows are independent, so you can mix.
How does this differ from the GP calculator?
The GP calculator takes a single cost figure you have already worked out. This one builds that figure from the invoice up, which is where the honest number comes from. Use this for new dishes and menu reviews, the other for a quick check.
My costed GP and my actual GP still do not match. Why?
Costing tells you what a dish should make. The gap to what your P&L reports is the interesting part, and it is usually some combination of portion drift, unrecorded waste, staff food, theft, delivery-platform commission, or buying at prices that have moved since you costed.
A gap of one or two points is normal. Five or more is worth investigating properly, and it is usually worth more than any price rise you are considering.
Rates and thresholds shown are for 2026/27, correct as at 6 April 2026 for England. They are editable above, confirm the current figures before relying on any output.
An estimate to help you think, not advice on your own business. The numbers depend on assumptions only you can confirm, talk to us before you act on them.
Costed GP and actual GP, side by side every period
We integrate purchasing and EPOS so the gap between what a dish should make and what it does make stops being a mystery.