Topic · 8 guides
Food cost fundamentals
The core math: percentages, plate costs, and the mistakes that quietly cost four points of margin.
Guides in this topic
- Food cost fundamentals
Average restaurant food cost per month: build your purchasing budget
Plan monthly food purchases from sales, recipe costs and inventory. Separate consumption, orders and cash payments with three worked budget scenarios.
· 4 min read - Food cost fundamentals
Cooking Yield: How to Measure Cooking Loss and Cost the Cooked Portion
Measure cooking yield, turn it into a cost per cooked pound and portion, and compare USDA-published yields for common cuts, with ranges that show why your own test matters.
· 10 min read - Food cost fundamentals
Produce Yield Chart: USDA As-Purchased to Ready-to-Use Yields for Common Fruits and Vegetables
USDA-measured yields from as-purchased to ready-to-use for 36 fruits and vegetables, including lemon and lime juice, with the formulas to cost and order produce from them.
· 5 min read - Food cost fundamentals
What's a Good Food Cost Percentage? National Medians and the Target Your P&L Can Afford
What national data says about restaurant food cost percentage — 2024 medians of 32.0% full service and 32.4% limited service — why formats differ, and how to set the target your P&L can afford.
· 4 min read - Food cost fundamentals
How to Calculate Food Cost Percentage: The Formula, a Worked Month and a Worked Dish
The food cost formula — beginning inventory plus purchases minus ending inventory, divided by food sales — worked for a month and for one dish, with what counts as food and the mistakes that skew it.
· 7 min read - Food cost fundamentals
Ideal vs. Actual Food Cost: Which Inputs Explain the Gap?
Compare reviewed recipe costs and manually supplied dish counts with inventory-adjusted period food cost, then check invoice, unit, portion and timing evidence.
· 4 min read - Food cost fundamentals
Recipe Costing, Step by Step: Purchase Unit to Served Portion
Cost a recipe from supplier pack to served portion, with source dates, measured yields, a worked plate and explicit handling of missing ingredient costs.
· 4 min read - Food cost fundamentals
Why Is My Food Cost So High? Check Units, Portions and Invoices
Diagnose a high food-cost figure with a decision tree and evidence checklist for dates, pack units, recipe costs, portions, waste and purchasing changes.
· 4 min read
Terms these guides define
- COGS (cost of goods sold)
- The cost of the food and beverage actually consumed in a period, computed from inventory rather than from purchases.
- Yield percentage
- Usable ingredient weight divided by starting weight, expressed as a percentage for a specified preparation step.
- Trim loss
- The weight removed during preparation — the difference between what you bought and what you can cook.
- Edible portion vs. as-purchased
- As purchased (AP) describes food in the form you buy it; edible portion (EP) describes the usable amount after a specified preparation step.
- Food cost percentage
- The share of a dish's menu price consumed by the ingredients on the plate.
- Prime cost
- Total cost of goods sold plus total labor cost — the two numbers that decide whether a restaurant survives.
- Ideal food cost
- The food cost percentage your menu would produce if every plate were made exactly to spec and nothing was wasted.
- Contribution margin
- The dollars a dish contributes to overhead and profit after its ingredient cost — menu price minus plate cost.
- Plate cost
- The total ingredient cost of one served portion, garnish and sides included.
- Q factor
- A per-plate allowance for the small unbilled items — oil, butter, salt, bread service — that never make it onto a recipe card.
- Theoretical vs. actual food cost
- Theoretical is what the recipes say you should have spent; actual is what inventory says you did. The gap is the whole story.
- Variance
- The dollar gap between theoretical and actual food cost — the money that left without a sale.
- Shrinkage
- Inventory that disappears without a corresponding sale — waste, spoilage, error and theft combined.
- Sub-recipe
- A recipe used as an ingredient in other recipes — stock, sauce, dough, compound butter.
- Portion control
- Keeping served portions equal to specced portions — the difference between the food cost you calculated and the one you get.
- Waste percentage
- The share of purchased food that is thrown away rather than sold — spoilage, overproduction, errors and returns.
- Comps
- Food or drink given away — recovery, staff meals, promotions — real cost with no matching revenue.
- Price creep
- Small, frequent supplier price increases that individually look ignorable and collectively remove several points of margin a year.
- Invoice reconciliation
- Checking that what you ordered, what arrived, and what you were billed are the same three things.
- Spoilage
- Product lost to age, temperature or damage before it could be sold.