Guides
Restaurant food cost guides
The math behind a restaurant that makes money. Every guide here works a real example with real numbers. No restatements of the obvious, no invented statistics, and no advice we wouldn't give an operator sitting across the table.
By restaurant type
Coffee Shop Cost Control: Cup Economics
Costing a latte properly — beans, milk, cup, lid — plus the alternative-milk leak, the waste nobody logs, and why a café's problem is almost never the coffee price.
· 3 min read
Menu pricing & engineering
Contribution Margin Beats Food Cost Percentage
Why food cost percentage systematically points at the wrong dish, with worked examples showing how percentage-chasing costs a restaurant real money.
· 3 min read
Operations & inventory
Food Costing Software vs. a Spreadsheet: An Honest Comparison
When a spreadsheet is genuinely the right tool for restaurant recipe costing, when it stops being one, and the specific number that marks the switch.
· 3 min read
Operations & inventory
Food Costing With Square: What Actually Works
How to run recipe costing and margin tracking alongside Square — what Square gives you natively, what it doesn't, and how to get costed dishes without retyping your catalog.
· 3 min read
By restaurant type
Food Truck Costs: Why Low Rent Buys You a Higher Food Cost
The food truck cost structure explained — why a 35% food cost can work when rent is 3% of sales, plus the costs that replace rent and the break-even math per service.
· 4 min read
Food cost fundamentals
What's a Good Food Cost Percentage? (By Restaurant Type)
Typical food cost ranges for pizzerias, cafés, bars, fine dining and food trucks — and why the right target depends on your rent and check average, not an industry average.
· 3 min read
Food cost fundamentals
How to Calculate Food Cost Percentage (With a Worked Example)
The food cost percentage formula, a full worked example on a real burger, the period-level version from inventory, and the four mistakes that make the number wrong.
· 4 min read
Menu pricing & engineering
How to Price a Menu Item: Markup vs. Margin
The formula for pricing a dish from plate cost and target margin, the markup/margin confusion that underprices menus, and the three adjustments before a price goes on the menu.
· 4 min read
Menu pricing & engineering
How to Raise Menu Prices Without Losing Regulars
Which dishes to raise, by how much, when to do it, and how to communicate it — plus the break-even volume math that shows how much room you actually have.
· 5 min read
Food cost fundamentals
Ideal vs. Actual Food Cost: Where the Variance Actually Hides
How to compute theoretical food cost from your POS mix, compare it against actual COGS, and work through the six causes of variance in the order that usually pays.
· 3 min read
Menu pricing & engineering
Menu Engineering: The Four-Quadrant Matrix
How to build a menu engineering matrix from a POS product mix report — with a full worked example on a 12-item menu and the specific action for each quadrant.
· 4 min read
By restaurant type
Pizzeria Food Cost: Why 20% Is Normal
Costing a pizza from dough to box, why pizzerias run food costs in the low twenties, and why cheese — not flour — is the number that decides your year.
· 3 min read
Profit & loss
Prime Cost Explained
What prime cost includes, how to calculate it correctly, the 65% benchmark, and why food cost and labour percentages are both misleading on their own.
· 4 min read
Food cost fundamentals
Recipe Costing, Step by Step
How to cost a recipe properly: yield-adjusted ingredient costs, sub-recipes, the Q factor, and a full worked example from invoice to plate cost to menu price.
· 4 min read
Profit & loss
My Restaurant Isn't Making Money. Where Do I Look?
A structured walk down the restaurant P&L to find where the profit is going — with the arithmetic for how much each lever is actually worth at your volume.
· 4 min read
Profit & loss
The Restaurant P&L, Line by Line (For Owner-Operators)
A full restaurant profit and loss statement explained line by line, with a worked example, healthy percentage ranges, and the four lines where problems actually show up first.
· 4 min read
Operations & inventory
The Data-Entry Tax in Restaurant Software
Most restaurant costing tools fail not on features but on setup burden and maintenance. What the data-entry tax is, why it's fatal, and what to ask a vendor before you buy.
· 4 min read
Food cost fundamentals
Why Is My Food Cost So High? A Diagnostic
Seven causes of a high restaurant food cost, in the order they're usually the answer — with the check that confirms or eliminates each one in under an hour.
· 4 min read
One number a week.
What wholesale food prices did, what it costs a typical dish, and one thing worth repricing. Built from the same commodity pipeline behind our food cost index. No pitch, one email, unsubscribe in a click.