Recipe Costing Calculator

What does each portion really cost, and what should you charge?

Paste your pantry (pack size, pack price, usable yield) and your recipes. It converts cups to grams and ounces to pounds, charges you for the trim you throw away, rolls sub-recipes like a frosting or a sauce into the dish, adds labor and packaging, and shows cost per portion, food cost percentage and the menu price that hits your target.

Planning arithmetic on prices you type in. Both boxes are plain text, so you can paste straight from a spreadsheet.

1. Pantry: what you buy

One line per ingredient: name, pack size, pack price, yield %, density. Yield (usable share after trim and waste) and density (grams per ml, only needed to mix weight and volume) are optional. Lines starting with # are notes.

Pantry

2. Recipes

Start each recipe with # Name | portions=24 | price=3.50 | labor=40 | pack=0.12 (price per portion, labor minutes for the batch, packaging per portion; all but portions are optional). Then one ingredient, quantity line each. Start a line with @ to use another recipe: @Frosting, 12 portion or @Frosting, 1 batch.

Recipes

3. Your targets

Target food cost (% of menu price)

Labor cost per hour ($)

Round suggested prices up to the next ($)

Questions people ask

How do I calculate the cost of a recipe?

Convert every ingredient to what it costs per gram, ounce, cup or each, multiply by how much the recipe uses, and add the lines. Then divide by the number of portions. The hard parts are the unit conversions (a cup of flour is not a cup of sugar by weight) and the trim you throw away, and the tool does both.

What is yield percent and why does it matter?

Yield is the share of what you buy that you can actually use. If walnuts are 92% usable after sorting, each usable pound costs about 8.7% more than the pack price says. Costing from the pack price alone understates the dish.

What food cost percentage should I aim for?

Many restaurants plan around 28 to 35 percent of menu price for ingredients, and bakeries and cafes often run lower, but it depends on your labor, rent and menu. The target is a box you can change; the tool shows the price that hits it and how far a dish is from it today.

Can I cost a recipe that uses another recipe, like a sauce or a frosting?

Yes. Write the sub-recipe as its own block and use it in another with a line starting with @, for example @Vanilla frosting, 12 portion. Its cost per portion or per batch rolls up into the parent, and the tool warns about loops.

Is this accounting or pricing advice?

No. It is arithmetic on the prices and quantities you type. It does not know your suppliers, taxes, waste or local rules, and a menu price is your decision. Prices in the example are placeholders.

Not decided

Your real supplier prices and how often they change, sales tax and tips, spoilage and comps beyond the yield you enter, overhead such as rent and utilities, local labeling or allergen rules, and what your customers will pay. The example prices, yields and densities are placeholders, not current market figures: replace them with your invoices before relying on a number. Your pantry and recipes are not saved by this tool; copy them somewhere safe.