Most small restaurants price a dish by looking at the place down the street and the cost of the main ingredient. The patty, the chicken, the fish. Everything else gets left out: the bun, the fries, the sauce, the fryer oil, the gas, the trim that goes in the bin and the food that comes back on the plate. Each one is small. Together they change what a plate costs, and that changes how many plates you need to sell each day before you make anything.
Where the money slips away in a restaurant
- The whole plate. A burger is not just a patty. It has a bun, cheese, lettuce, tomato, sauce, a side of fries and a share of the frying oil.
- Line waste. Trim from prep, lettuce that wilts, the fries that sit too long, the sauce left in the bain-marie at close.
- Oil and gas. Bought by the drum and the bill, and almost never spread across the dishes that use them.
- Portions that grow. Every cook plates a little differently. Twenty grams of extra protein per plate, across 80 plates, is 1.6 kg given away.
- Fixed costs per day. Rent, wages, your own pay, utilities and insurance. You pay them whether you serve 40 covers or 120.
The guide on how to cost a plate for your menu shows how to build a cost card for each dish, sides and sauces included.
Worked example: a burger plate at $14
You sell a burger with fries at $14. You weighed your portions and costed each part from your own receipts:
| Item | Per plate |
|---|---|
| Bun | $0.45 |
| Patty (cost per cooked patty) | $1.90 |
| Cheese | $0.35 |
| Sauce, lettuce, tomato, onion | $0.40 |
| Fries | $0.55 |
| Frying oil share | $0.15 |
| Variable cost per plate | $3.80 |
Each plate leaves you 14.00 − 3.80 = $10.20 towards fixed costs.
Your fixed costs per day: rent $180, staff $320, your own pay $160, utilities and insurance $90. Total: $750.
- Plates to cover the day: 750 ÷ 10.20 = 73.5, so 74 plates.
- If you sell 90: 90 × 10.20 = $918, and 918 − 750 = $168 profit for the day, with your pay already covered.
Now your butcher puts the price up and each patty costs $0.40 more. Each plate leaves $9.80, and you need 750 ÷ 9.80 = 76.5, so 77 plates a day just to cover costs. Three more plates every day for a rise that looked small on the invoice.
These prices are before sales tax. Check your local tax rules, or ask an accountant, for what to add on top.
The numbers that matter most
Cost per plate. One for every dish on the menu, with everything that goes on the plate. To see what price a food cost percentage of your choosing gives you, use the menu price calculator.
Plates a day to cover fixed costs. Fixed costs per day divided by what each plate leaves. The break-even calculator gives you the number per day and per month.
Covers and average ticket. Daily sales are the number of people served times what each spends. The guide on covers, average ticket and table turnover explains which lever does what.
Prime cost. Food plus labour as a share of the week's sales, with your own hours included. The guide on prime cost shows how to work it out weekly.
Drinks, sides and desserts. They often leave more per sale than the main. Read where restaurants make margin on drinks, sides and extras before you discount anything.
Which dishes to push or drop. With a month of sales you can rank the menu by how often each dish sells and what it leaves. The guide on menu engineering gives you the method.
Waste per day. Record prep trim, spoilage and what is left at close. The guide on tracking waste in a restaurant kitchen has a simple sheet.
How to keep track
Every night: covers, sales, plates sold of each dish and what was thrown away. Every week: the invoices for your five most expensive ingredients. When one jumps, recost the dishes that use it. The guide on when and how to update menu prices helps you decide how much, and on which dishes first.
Do it with the calculator
The food cost calculator costs one recipe at a time and saves nothing, so note the result or copy the link. For one dish, enter the ingredients with what you paid and how much you use, waste as a percentage, prep minutes and gas as other costs per batch. It returns the cost per plate, what each plate leaves you and the price for your target margin.