Free tool
Free recipe costing template
A recipe costing template is a sheet that costs one dish line by line: what you paid for each ingredient, how much of it goes on the plate, what the plate costs you, and what you should charge to hit your target food cost. Build the columns below in Excel, Numbers, or Google Sheets and you have it. It is for owners and chefs who price by feel right now and want the number in front of them before the next menu print.
The columns to build
One row per ingredient, one sheet per dish. Ten columns is all it takes.
| Column | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Ingredient | The item as it reads on your invoice, not the menu name |
| Purchase pack | What you actually buy, e.g. 50 lb bag, case of 6, 1 gal jug |
| Purchase price | What you paid for that pack on the last invoice |
| Units per pack | How many countable units are in the pack, e.g. 6 jars |
| Size of each unit | The size and unit of one of those, e.g. 32 oz |
| Cost per unit | Purchase price divided by total ounces, grams, or each |
| Recipe quantity | How much of it goes into one plate, in the same unit |
| Line cost | Cost per unit times recipe quantity |
| Yield percent | For items you trim or cook down, the usable share |
| Notes | Prep loss, substitutions, who to call when the price moves |
Under the last row, add three cells: plate cost, target food cost percent, and suggested menu price. Suggested price is plate cost divided by the target percent written as a decimal.
Pair it with the free vendor price book template, which is where the purchase prices in column three come from.
How to use it, step by step
- List every ingredient on the plate. Include the things people forget: oil the pan is fried in, the pickle, the sauce cup, the paper liner. If it leaves the kitchen with the plate, it belongs on the sheet.
- Write down what you buy, not what you use. Pull the last invoice. Enter the pack, the pack price, how many units are in the pack, and the size of each unit. This is the step people get wrong, and it is the one that throws every number after it.
- Turn the pack price into a cost per unit. Divide the pack price by the total ounces, grams, or each in the pack. Now every ingredient is priced in the same unit your recipe is written in. Convert grams to ounces before you divide, never after.
- Enter the recipe quantity for one plate. Weigh it once in the kitchen rather than guessing. A guess on a portion is a guess on your whole margin, repeated every ticket.
- Apply a yield percent where you trim or cook. If you buy 10 lb of beef and 8 lb reaches a plate, your yield is 80 percent, and your real cost per usable pound is the purchase cost divided by 0.80. Skip this and every protein plate looks cheaper than it is.
- Add the line costs to get the plate cost. That total is what the plate costs you to make today, at today's invoice prices.
- Set your target food cost percent. Pick the number your business actually needs, not a number from a blog. Most independents work somewhere in the high 20s to mid 30s, and the right target depends on your rent, labor, and volume.
- Divide to get a suggested menu price. Plate cost divided by target food cost percent equals the suggested price. Then round to a price that reads well on the menu and check it against what the plate is worth to your guests.
- Date the sheet. Write the date you pulled the prices in a cell at the top. A recipe cost with no date is a rumor.
A worked example
Illustrative example. The dish and the prices below are made up to show the arithmetic, not taken from any restaurant. Use your own invoices.
Illustrative dish: three chicken tacos with rice and beans
| Ingredient | What you paid | On the plate | Line cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken thigh, boneless | $3.20 per lb, 75 percent yield after trim | 6 oz on the plate | $1.60 |
| Tortillas | $3.60 per pack of 24 | 3 each | $0.45 |
| Slaw mix | $8.40 per 5 lb bag | 3 oz | $0.32 |
| Crema | $12.00 per 64 oz tub | 1.5 oz | $0.28 |
| Lime | $0.28 each | 0.5 each | $0.14 |
| Cilantro and onion | $0.14 per 1 oz portion | 1 oz | $0.14 |
| Rice and beans side | batch costed separately | 1 portion | $0.41 |
| Basket liner and boat | $0.06 per set | 1 set | $0.06 |
| Plate cost | $3.40 | ||
The arithmetic, spelled out
- Chicken: $3.20 per lb divided by 0.75 yield is $4.27 per usable lb. Divided by 16 is $0.267 per usable oz. Times 6 oz is $1.60.
- Tortillas: $3.60 divided by 24 is $0.15 each. Times 3 is $0.45.
- Slaw: $8.40 divided by 80 oz is $0.105 per oz. Times 3 oz is $0.32.
- Crema: $12.00 divided by 64 oz is $0.1875 per oz. Times 1.5 oz is $0.28.
- Lime: $0.28 times 0.5 is $0.14. Cilantro and onion, $0.14. Rice and beans portion, $0.41. Liner and boat, $0.06.
- Plate cost: 1.60 + 0.45 + 0.32 + 0.28 + 0.14 + 0.14 + 0.41 + 0.06 = $3.40.
- Suggested price at a 30 percent target: $3.40 divided by 0.30 is $11.33, so you would round to $11.50 and the plate runs a 29.6 percent food cost.
- Same plate at a 28 percent target: $3.40 divided by 0.28 is $12.14, so $12 leaves you at 28.3 percent.
Now watch what one invoice does. If chicken goes from $3.20 to $3.80 per lb, the usable cost becomes $5.07 per lb, the chicken line becomes $1.90, and the plate cost becomes $3.70. At $11.50 on the menu you are now running 32.2 percent, not 29.6 percent. Nothing on your menu changed. Nothing in your spreadsheet changed either, and that is the problem.
Want to skip the arithmetic? The free food cost calculator does the same math in your browser and shows the suggested price as you change the target percent.
What a spreadsheet will not do for you
A costing sheet is honest for exactly as long as the prices in it are. The template is a snapshot of one day's invoices. It is genuinely useful, and it has four hard limits worth knowing before you rely on it:
- It goes stale the moment a vendor moves a price. The sheet keeps showing the number you typed in March until someone retypes it.
- It will never tell you a price changed. There is no alert in a spreadsheet. You find out at the end of the month when the food cost line is off, and by then you have sold the dish a thousand times at the old price.
- One ingredient sits in many recipes. Change the price of chicken and you have to remember every sheet that uses chicken. Miss one and two dishes now disagree about what the same ingredient costs.
- Unit conversions are where the errors hide. Ounces entered as grams, or a per gram price used as a per ounce price, quietly move a plate cost by a factor of 28. Nothing in the sheet flags it.
None of that means do not use the template. Use it. Just know that the maintenance, not the math, is the part that beats people.
When you want the sheet to keep itself current
That is the whole reason Smooth Ops exists. You photograph a supplier invoice, the AI reads every line, matches it to your catalog, and flags any price that moved since last time. You approve it, and only then does the food cost behind every recipe using that ingredient update. The original invoice photo stays stored and searchable, so you can prove what you paid when you call the vendor.
Smooth Ops is one app with 9 modules: Food Cost, Invoices, Sourcing, Payments, Cash, Inventory, Tips, Tasks, and Schedule Check. Start with one module and add more later. It is $25 per module per month, per location, or $99 per month per location for the Everything plan. Month to month, no contract, cancel anytime.
- Recipe costing software: what changes when the recipe book stops being a spreadsheet.
- The Food Cost module: recipes, plate costs, and target margins in one place.
- Restaurant invoice scanning: how a photo of an invoice becomes updated ingredient prices.
- Vendor price book template: the free companion sheet for tracking those prices by hand.
Questions, answered
What is a recipe costing template?+
It is a sheet with one row per ingredient in a dish. Each row turns what you paid for a purchase pack into a cost per ounce, gram, or each, multiplies that by how much goes on the plate, and adds the lines up into a plate cost. From there you divide by your target food cost percent to get a suggested menu price.
How do I calculate plate cost by hand?+
For every ingredient, divide the purchase price by the total units in the pack to get a cost per unit, divide again by your yield percent if you trim or cook the item down, then multiply by the quantity that goes on one plate. Add all the line costs together and that total is your plate cost.
What food cost percentage should I target?+
Pick the number your own business needs rather than a rule of thumb. Independents commonly work somewhere in the high 20s to mid 30s, but the right target depends on your rent, labor model, and volume. Cost the plate first, then decide what the plate needs to earn.
How do I get from plate cost to menu price?+
Divide the plate cost by your target food cost expressed as a decimal. A plate that costs $3.40 at a 30 percent target is $3.40 divided by 0.30, which is $11.33, so you would round to a menu price near $11.50 or $12 and sanity check it against what guests will pay.
Should I include labor in a recipe cost?+
Keep prep labor out of the ingredient lines so the plate cost stays comparable across dishes, then account for labor when you set the target percent. If a dish takes an hour of butchery, that belongs in the target you set for it, not buried in a per ounce number.
How often should I recost my recipes?+
Any time an ingredient price moves, which in practice means monthly at a minimum and weekly for produce and protein. This is the part a spreadsheet cannot help with, because the sheet will keep showing you last quarter's number until you go update it yourself.
Does Smooth Ops do this automatically?+
Yes. The Food Cost module keeps the recipe math, and the Invoices module reads your supplier invoices so the ingredient prices behind every recipe update themselves. Smooth Ops is one app with 9 modules, so you can start with Food Cost alone and add more later. It is $25 per module per month, per location, or $99 per month per location for the Everything plan, with 30 days free, no credit card.
Cost every plate once, then let it stay current
Smooth Ops reads your invoices and updates the ingredient prices behind every recipe, so your plate costs are today's numbers.
30 days free, no credit card