Recipe costing · plate costing
Recipe costing software for restaurants
Recipe costing software prices every ingredient in a dish at what you actually pay for it and returns a plate cost, a food cost percentage and a contribution margin. Marji builds those recipes from a photograph of your menu instead of a blank form, then recosts them the day a supplier price moves.
No credit card · or cost one recipe right now with the free calculator, no account.
Most recipe costing projects die around dish fifteen
Not because the software was bad. Because the software was a blank recipe form, forty times over, and the person filling it in also runs a kitchen. The costing was never the hard part — the data entry was, and a half-costed menu produces worse decisions than no costed menu at all, because the dishes you did cost look like the whole picture.
So the first question worth asking any recipe costing tool is not what it computes. It's what's on the screen the first time you open it. Marji's answer: photograph your paper menu, and every dish comes back digitised, with a draft recipe underneath it, priced against a catalogue of benchmark costs.
Those drafts are estimates and they are labelled estimates — on the line, in the dish, and in every number they roll up into — until a human edits them, at which point the line flips to measured. An estimated plate cost is a starting point that takes you thirty seconds to correct. A blank form is a starting point that takes you an evening.
The four jobs a costing tool has to do
Cost a plate to the gram
Every ingredient at its purchase unit and purchase price, converted to the unit the recipe actually uses. A case of 24 lb of chicken thighs becomes a cost per ounce, and the 6 oz on the plate costs what it costs.
Hold yield honestly
You buy as-purchased and you serve edible-portion. Trim, peel and cooked shrink are where a plate cost is usually understated by a fifth, so yield is a field on the line, not a rule of thumb applied afterwards.
Recost when the invoice moves
A plate cost is only true on the day it was calculated. When a supplier price changes, every recipe containing that ingredient recalculates — with the invoice line kept as the evidence for why.
Turn cost into a price
Costing that stops at a number is a bookkeeping exercise. The output that matters is the menu price that restores your target margin, and which dishes are furthest from it right now.
One plate, costed properly
Half chicken, roasted, with potatoes, on a $26 menu. Note the potato line: costed as-purchased it looks like $0.26 of a 10 oz portion, but only 8.5 oz reaches the plate. Costing the served weight at the purchase price is the most common way a plate cost comes out low.
| Ingredient | Purchase price | On the plate | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken, whole, 3.5 lbHalf bird, no further trim | $2.19 / lb | 1.75 lb as-purchased | $3.83 |
| Potatoes, russet, 50 lb sack85% yield after peel and eye removal | $0.42 / lb | 10 oz AP → 8.5 oz EP | $0.26 |
| Butter, 36 lb casePan sauce and potato finish | $3.64 / lb | 1.5 oz | $0.34 |
| Thyme, garlic, lemon, stockAromatics and 3 oz jus from bones | — | per plate | $0.61 |
| Oil, salt, pepperCosted at batch rate | — | per plate | $0.11 |
| Plate cost | $5.15 | ||
- Food cost
- 19.8%
- Contribution margin
- $20.85
- If chicken rises 6%
- 20.7%
That last column is the whole argument for software over a sheet. A 6% move on one line — the kind that arrives on a Tuesday invoice and gets filed without being read — costs 0.9 points on this dish. Nothing about it is visible until someone recalculates, and in a spreadsheet nobody does. Run your own plate through the free calculator if you want the arithmetic before you want the account.
What this is, and what it isn't
Marji does
- Digitise and cost a menu from a photograph
- Read supplier invoices and keep a cost history per ingredient
- Recost every affected recipe when a price moves
- Recommend the menu price that restores your target margin
- Push an approved price back to a linked Square catalog (early access)
Marji does not
- Count inventory or run theoretical-vs-actual variance
- Place orders or manage purchasing workflows
- Schedule labour
- Batch and sub-recipes with their own yields — not yet
- Change any price without your explicit approval
If the right-hand column is what you came for, the tool you want is a full inventory platform, and we keep an honest comparison of the alternatives — including the ones that beat us — plus a shortlist by restaurant type where we are not first on four of six lists.
Before you buy anything
- How to cost a recipe, step by stepThe manual method, in full. Do this once by hand before you buy software to do it.
- Recipe costing spreadsheet vs. softwareWhen a sheet is genuinely the right answer — and the point at which it stops being.
- Plate cost, definedThe term, the formula, and what it does and doesn't include.
- Yield & edible portion calculatorThe correction that fixes the most commonly wrong line on any recipe.
Questions
- What is recipe costing software?
- Software that stores a recipe as a list of ingredients with quantities, prices each line from what you actually pay your supplier, and returns a plate cost, a food cost percentage and a contribution margin. Good ones recalculate that plate cost automatically when a purchase price changes, so the number stays true between menu prints.
- How is it different from a spreadsheet?
- A spreadsheet does the arithmetic perfectly well. What it can't do is notice: when your distributor raises chicken 6%, nothing in the sheet moves until a person retypes the price into every recipe that uses it. That maintenance load — not the formula — is what makes costing spreadsheets go stale. We wrote the honest comparison rather than the marketing one; it's linked below.
- How long does it take to cost a whole menu?
- Typing a 40-dish menu into a blank recipe database by hand is a genuine week of evenings, which is why most attempts are abandoned around dish fifteen. Marji drafts every recipe from a photo of the menu, so the job becomes correcting drafts — most operators get through a full menu in one sitting. The drafts are labelled as estimates until you edit them, and an estimate is never presented as a measured cost.
- Do I have to count inventory for this to work?
- No. Plate costing and inventory counting are different jobs, and we only do the first. If what you want is theoretical-versus-actual variance against counted stock, you want a full inventory platform, and we say so on our comparison pages rather than pretending otherwise.
- Does it handle yield, trim and cooked shrink?
- Yes — yield is a field on the recipe line, because it's the single most common reason a plate cost is wrong. If you cost 10 oz of potato at the as-purchased price and serve 8.5 oz of it, you've understated that line by 15%.
- Can it handle sub-recipes, like a sauce or a dough?
- Batch and sub-recipes with their own yields are on the roadmap, not shipped. Today you cost a batch, divide by portions, and enter the per-portion cost as a line. We'd rather tell you that now than have you find out in week two.
- What does recipe costing software cost?
- Marji is $59 per location per month — 14-day free trial, no card required — plus a permanently free tier that includes menu digitisation and a hosted QR menu. Established inventory platforms in this category typically publish several hundred dollars per location per month.
- What happens to my recipes if I stop paying?
- Nothing is deleted. The costing engine pauses, your QR menu stays live, and your recipes and cost history are still there and still exportable. We put this in writing on the pricing page for the same reason we put it here.
Start with the menu you already have.
Photograph it, check the read, and every dish is costed. 14-day free trial, no credit card — and the QR menu tier stays free whatever you decide.
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