How to Calculate Food Cost per Plate (With a Worked Example)

October 6, 2026

Menu Profit Planner spreadsheet showing plate cost and food cost per dish

Most restaurant owners know roughly what their dishes cost. Roughly is the problem. A plate that costs €0.40 more than you think, sold 100 times a week, quietly takes over €2,000 a year out of your pocket. The good news: costing a plate properly takes about 15 minutes, and you only need to do it once per dish, then update it when prices change.

What "food cost per plate" means

Food cost per plate is the total cost of every ingredient that goes onto one portion of a dish, including the parts you trim away and the small things you don't measure, like oil in the pan or a garnish. It covers what ends up on that one plate, whatever you bought this week.

Step 1: List every ingredient and the quantity per portion

Write the recipe for one portion, in grams, millilitres or pieces. Cost the real portion that leaves the pass: if your cooks put 220 g of braised beef on the plate rather than 200 g, use 220 g.

Step 2: Work out the cost per usable unit

For each ingredient, divide what you pay by how much you can actually use:

Cost per gram = pack price ÷ (pack size in grams × usable yield)

Yield is the share left after trimming, peeling or deboning. If you pay €21.00 for a 25 kg sack of floury potatoes and lose 15% when peeling, the yield is 85%, so the real cost is €21.00 ÷ (25,000 × 0.85) = about €0.00099 per gram. Skipping yield is the most common reason plate costs come out too low.

Step 3: Multiply by the quantity on the plate

Quantity × cost per unit gives the cost of each line. Add the lines together.

Step 4: Add a small buffer

Oil for the pan, salt, a squeeze of lemon, a few herb leaves: they're too small to weigh every time but they're real. Add 3–5% on top of the ingredient total to cover them.

A worked example: braised beef with mashed potato

Ingredient	Per plate	Cost per unit	Line cost
Beef chuck, trimmed	200 g	€0.0125/g	€2.50
Floury potatoes (85% yield)	200 g	€0.00099/g	€0.20
Butter	20 g	€0.0098/g	€0.20
Milk	30 ml	€0.0011/ml	€0.03
Onion (90% yield)	40 g	€0.0011/g	€0.04
Carrot (85% yield)	40 g	€0.00094/g	€0.04
Red wine	50 ml	€0.0077/ml	€0.39
Beef stock	100 ml	€0.0012/ml	€0.12
Olive oil	10 ml	€0.0088/ml	€0.09
Ingredients total			€3.60
+ 5% buffer			€0.18
Plate cost			€3.78

Line costs are rounded to the cent. The total uses the unrounded figures.

Step 5: Turn it into a food cost percentage

Divide the plate cost by the selling price before tax:

Food cost % = plate cost ÷ menu price (excluding tax)

The braised beef sells for €14.50 before tax, so the food cost is €3.78 ÷ €14.50 = 26%. Many independent restaurants aim for somewhere around 28–35%, so this dish has room to spare: it leaves €10.72 per plate before tax. (If your menu prices include VAT, remove the tax first, otherwise every dish will look cheaper to make than it really is.)

The mistakes that make plate costs wrong

Ignoring yield. Trimmed meat, peeled vegetables and fish bones are paid for, even though they never reach the plate.
Using last year's prices. Supplier prices move. A costing done once and never updated drifts further from reality every month.
Forgetting sauces and sides. Cost each sauce or base as its own small recipe, then use its cost per gram in the dishes that use it.
Costing the recipe card, not the real portion. Weigh a few plates as they leave the pass.
Using prices that include tax. Compare cost with the price you actually keep.

How often to recost

Recost a dish whenever one of its main ingredients changes price, and check the whole menu at least once a month. Once your ingredient list is set up, this takes minutes rather than hours.

Do it faster with a ready-made sheet

Everything above can be done with a pen and calculator. If you'd rather not, the Menu Profit Planner does the yield maths, adds the buffer, works out food cost % before tax, and flags every dish as OK, Watch or Reprice. It works in Excel and Google Sheets, in any currency.