Costs and margins for food businesses
You know what you sell. Do you know what you earn?
Rindero turns what you pay for ingredients into the real cost of every product and what you keep per kitchen hour.
Calculate my cost for free Read the guides
The Rindero app is in private beta. The calculator is free for everyone.
Hot sauce · 5 oz bottle
$1.50 you assumed
$3.18
loaded cost per bottle
Ingredients$0.98
Bottle, cap and label$0.95
Your time (75 min a batch)$1.00
Gas and power$0.25
Example with a batch of 24 bottles.
What almost everyone forgets when costing
Packaging and labels
A bottle, a cap and a label can cost as much as what goes inside.
Your own time
If you do not pay yourself in the cost, the price is wrong even when it “makes a profit”.
Waste and yield
What you peel, what burns and what does not sell raises the cost of every unit.
How it works
1. Enter your recipe
What you pay for each ingredient, how much you use per batch and how many units it makes.
2. Add what you cannot see
Packaging, minutes of work, gas, channel commission and sales tax.
3. Read the number
Cost per unit, margin, and the price you need for the margin you want.
Free tools for your kitchen
Quick calculators to price a dish, see how many sales you need each month and stop losing money on delivery apps.
- Menu price calculatorEnter what a dish costs and the food cost percentage you aim for: get the menu price, with tax and rounded to a clean number.→
- Break-even calculatorFixed costs, price and variable cost: how many units or plates you need to sell per month and per day to stop losing money.→
- Delivery app price calculatorWork out what to charge on a delivery app so you keep the same margin as in your shop after the commission, the packaging and the tax.→
Guides to start with
- How to know if your food product is profitableFour tests that tell you if a food product is really profitable: per unit, per kitchen hour, per sales channel and after your own pay. Worked example.→
- How to calculate the cost of a food productThe full method for costing what you sell: ingredients, packaging, your time, overhead and waste, worked down to cost per unit. Step by step with brownies.→
- How to price a food product: the complete methodThe full method for pricing what you make: loaded cost, target margin, a price for each sales channel, sales tax and a reality check against the market.→
- Markup vs margin: the difference that costs you moneyWhat markup is, what margin is, how to convert one into the other, and why mixing them up makes you charge less than you think. Table and example.→
- Loaded cost: why ingredients are not your real costWhat loaded cost is, what ingredient cost leaves out, and how to work it out per unit with packaging, time, overhead and waste. With a meal prep box example.→
- Break-even point for a small food businessHow to work out how many units you need to sell each month to cover your fixed costs and your own pay, for one product or several. Step-by-step example.→
For businesses like yours
- For caterers: quote per person without losing moneyHow to cost a catering job per person: food, disposables, staff hours, transport and your own time. A worked example in dollars and the numbers to watch.→
- For market stalls: waste, pitch fees and your real marginWhat you really make at a market stall or fair: unsold stock, the pitch fee and the cost per unit sold. A worked example in dollars and the numbers to track.→
- For bakeries and cake makers: yield, waste and oven timeHow to cost bread, cakes and bakes using the real yield of each batch, oven energy and your time. A worked example in dollars and the numbers to track.→
- For home food brands: price your time and packagingHow to price what you make in your own kitchen: your time, the bottle, the label, home energy and delivery. A worked example in dollars and what to measure.→
- For food trucks: daily fixed costs and break-evenHow many orders your food truck needs each day to cover the pitch, fuel, a helper and the truck itself. A worked example in dollars and the numbers to track.→
- For cloud kitchens (dark kitchens): commissions and marginHow to price in a delivery-only kitchen: app commission, delivery packaging, promotions and shared costs across brands. A worked example in dollars.→
- For restaurants: plate cost, covers and break-evenHow to cost a plate with sides, sauces, frying oil and line waste, and how many covers a day you need to cover your fixed costs. A worked example in dollars.→
- For cafés: cost per cup and cups per dayHow to cost a latte from grams of coffee, millilitres of milk, cup and lid, and how many cups a day you need to sell to cover the café. Worked in dollars.→
- For juice bars: fruit yield and cost per cupHow to cost fresh juice and smoothies from the real juice yield of each kilo of fruit, seasonal prices, cups and ice. A worked example in dollars.→
- For packaged food brands: from batch cost to shelf priceHow to cost a bottle of hot sauce with filling loss, bottle and label, and what you keep once the store and distributor take their share. In dollars.→
- For dessert makers: cost per piece and what goes unsoldHow to cost cupcakes, cakes, desserts in cups and sweets per piece, with decorating time, boxes and what does not sell. A worked example in dollars.→
- For meal prep businesses: cost per box and per routeHow to cost meal prep boxes and weekly plans with containers, cooking hours, energy and the cost of each delivery route. A worked example in dollars.→