What a plate costs before you pick a menu price
Plate costing looks like the easiest sum in a kitchen: add up the ingredients, divide by the portions. It goes wrong in one specific place, and the error is always in the same direction — the dish costs more than the arithmetic says.
Every figure below is invented to make the method visible. This page asserts nothing about what any ingredient costs or what any kitchen targets.
The trap: you pay for what you buy, not for what you serve
A joint of meat is trimmed. Potatoes are peeled. A bunch of herbs goes half to waste. You paid for all of it, so the cost of the part that reaches the plate is higher than the shelf price per kilo.
Work it per ingredient. Buy 2.5 kg of a cut at $18.00 a kilo: 2.5 × 18.00 = $45.00. After trimming, 2.0 kg is usable, a yield of 2.0 ÷ 2.5 = 80%. The usable cost is therefore 45.00 ÷ 2.0 = $22.50 a kilo, not $18.00. The recipe uses 1.6 kg: 1.6 × 22.50 = $36.00.
Same for potatoes. Buy 5 kg at $1.60: 5 × 1.60 = $8.00. Peeled yield 80% gives 4 kg usable, so 8.00 ÷ 4 = $2.00 a kilo. The recipe uses 2.4 kg: 2.4 × 2.00 = $4.80.
Cream, stock and aromatics used as bought: $6.40. A bunch of herbs at $2.40 of which half is used: 2.40 × 0.50 = $1.20.
Batch total: 36.00 + 4.80 + 6.40 + 1.20 = $48.40 for 8 portions, so 48.40 ÷ 8 = $6.05 a plate.
What the same dish looks like without the yield work
Cost it at shelf prices for the quantities that go in the pan and you get 1.6 × 18.00 = $28.80 of meat, 2.4 × 1.60 = $3.84 of potatoes and the same 6.40 + 1.20 = $7.60 of everything else: 28.80 + 3.84 + 7.60 = $40.24, or 40.24 ÷ 8 = $5.03 a plate.
That understates the plate by 6.05 − 5.03 = $1.02, which is 1.02 ÷ 6.05 = 16.9% of the real cost. On 40 covers a week it is 40 × 1.02 = $40.80, and across a year 40.80 × 52 = $2,121.60 — from one dish, from one skipped step.
Backing into a menu price
The usual way round is to divide the plate cost by the food-cost percentage you are aiming at. Suppose that target is 28% — a number you choose, not one this page recommends: 6.05 ÷ 0.28 = $21.61, leaving 21.61 − 6.05 = $15.56 a plate above the ingredients. Check it: 6.05 ÷ 21.61 = 28.0%.
Run the same target off the un-yielded cost and you would price at 5.03 ÷ 0.28 = $17.96. The two prices are 21.61 − 17.96 = $3.65 apart, and at $17.96 the dish is actually running a food cost of 6.05 ÷ 17.96 = 33.7% — five and a half points away from the target, on a menu that was priced to hit it.
Why the ingredient cost is only part of a price
That $15.56 is not profit. It is what is left to pay for the people who cooked and served it, the gas and the power, the rent, the dishwasher, the wastage and the portions sent back, the staff meal, the card fees, and the commission on a delivery order — and then, after all of that, profit.
Which is why the food-cost target is a business decision and not a formula. A dish with 40 minutes of skilled preparation and a dish assembled in 90 seconds do not carry the same load, and a single percentage applied across a menu will over-price one and under-price the other. The arithmetic gives you the floor and a consistent way to compare dishes. Where the price lands above that floor is yours.
Two more things worth costing
Cook loss as well as trim loss. If the batch is meant to yield 8 portions and reliably serves 7, the true cost per plate is 48.40 ÷ 7 = $6.91, not $6.05. Cost the portions you actually get.
Re-run it when a price moves. If the meat goes from $18.00 to $21.00 a kilo, the usable cost becomes (2.5 × 21.00) ÷ 2.0 = $26.25 a kilo, the meat in the dish becomes 1.6 × 26.25 = $42.00, the batch 42.00 + 4.80 + 6.40 + 1.20 = $54.40 and the plate 54.40 ÷ 8 = $6.80. At the unchanged menu price of $21.61 the food cost has gone from 28.0% to 6.80 ÷ 21.61 = 31.5% without anyone deciding anything.
The Recipe & Plate Costing tool takes the total ingredient cost for a batch, the servings it yields and your target food-cost percentage, and returns the cost per plate, the price that target implies and the gross profit per plate. The yield arithmetic happens before you type: the tool takes the batch total you worked out, uses whatever percentage you enter, and holds no opinion about the number.