How much does a burger cost to make?

To work out what a burger costs to make, add the bun, the patty costed with its cooking loss, the cheese, the salad, the sauces, the griddle fat and gas and the wrapper. For a meal, add the fries with their share of the fryer oil and the drink. In the example below, a classic cheeseburger costs $3.30 in ingredients and the meal $4.42. The patty is the biggest cost, and it is exactly where the sums usually go wrong.

The patty: raw, cooked and what you lose

A burger patty gives off fat and water on the griddle. A 150 g raw patty comes off lighter, and how much lighter depends on your mince, its fat and the way you cook.

There are two common mistakes:

• Using the cooked weight at the raw price. If you say "my burger has 120 g of beef" because that is what it weighs cooked, and multiply 120 g by the raw price per kilo, your cost comes out too low.
• Never measuring. You form patties by eye and some come out at 130 g and others at 170 g.

Do this test once: form 10 patties, weigh them raw, cook them as usual and weigh them again. Divide the cooked weight by the raw weight. If 150 g raw comes out at 120 g, you keep 0.80 of each kilo. The guide on meat yield covers the full test, including cuts you trim yourself.

With that number:

cost per kilo of cooked patty = raw price per kilo ÷ what you keep

The other parts

• Bun: divide the price of the pack or case by the number of buns. If some go stale or get squashed, count only the ones you use.
• Cheese: pack price divided by slices. If you buy a block and slice it, weigh how many slices you get.
• Salad: lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles. Count how many burgers a lettuce or a kilo of tomatoes gives you after the outer leaves and ends go.
• Sauces: mayo, ketchup, mustard, your house sauce. Count how many burgers a tub or bottle covers.
• Griddle: fat or butter, and gas. Estimate how many burgers you cook per bottle or per bill.
• Wrapper: greaseproof paper, box, skewer. For delivery add the bag; the guide on packaging cost per unit shows how to get the real cost of each.

Fries and frying oil

Fries have two losses: what you throw away when peeling and cutting, and the water they lose in the fryer. Do the same as with the patty: weigh 1 kg of unpeeled potatoes, peel, cut, fry and weigh what comes out.

Oil is spread over every portion you fry before you change it. If you fill the fryer with 8 litres and change it every 150 portions, each portion carries 1/150 of the oil. The guide on frying oil cost explains how to count those portions and when it pays to change the oil.

Worked example: classic cheeseburger and meal

You sell burgers from a food truck or a small counter. These are your prices and your measurements.

The patty: you buy 80/20 beef mince at $11.00 per kilo. You form 150 g raw patties; your test gave 120 g cooked (0.80).

• Cost per patty: 0.150 × 11.00 = $1.65
• Cost per cooked kilo: 11.00 ÷ 0.80 = $13.75, and 0.120 × 13.75 = $1.65 (the same figure, seen from the cooked side)

The burger:

Fries, 200 g portion: you buy potatoes at $1.20 per kilo. From 1 kg unpeeled you get 550 g of fries (0.55).

• Potatoes: 1.20 ÷ 0.55 = $2.18 per kilo of fries; 0.200 × 2.18 = $0.44
• Oil: 8 litres at $2.50 = $20, changed every 150 portions: 20 ÷ 150 = $0.13
• Salt and fry boat: $0.10
• Total fries: 0.44 + 0.13 + 0.10 = $0.67 (unrounded, $0.669)

The drink: a can of soda bought at the cash and carry for $0.45.

Meal: 3.30 + 0.669 + 0.45 = $4.42 in ingredients.

Add your prep time and your overheads spread per meal (in your case $1.80) and the loaded cost of the meal is $6.22.

What the example tells you

The patty is $1.65 of $3.30: half the burger. If you costed it as 120 g cooked at the raw price, you would put 0.120 × 11.00 = $1.32, which is $0.33 short per burger. At 40 burgers a day over 26 days, that is 1,040 × 0.33 = $343.20 a month missing from your numbers.

The extra patty

Many places charge a round amount for a double. Do the sum: extra patty $1.65 plus extra cheese $0.30 = $1.95. If you charge $2.50, you keep $0.55 from that upsell. If you want the extra to carry the same cost share as the single burger, the upcharge is 1.95 ÷ 0.35 = $5.57 (using the 35% from the example below).

From cost to price

You set the price, but it starts from the cost. If you choose ingredients to be 35% of the price (the percentage is yours; this is only for the example):

• Burger on its own: 3.30 ÷ 0.35 = $9.43
• Meal: 4.419 ÷ 0.35 = $12.63

The plate price tool does this sum with the percentage you choose, and the guide on how to cost a plate for your menu helps you decide it.

If you sell through delivery apps, the commission comes out of that price. Say the app charges 25%: to keep the same as at the counter, the meal on the app would have to be 12.63 ÷ 0.75 = $16.84, plus the box and bag. The delivery price tool does that sum with the commission you are actually charged.

The method is the same for any dish; the general guide on what a dish costs to make walks through it step by step with other examples.

Do it with the calculator

In the food cost calculator, set up your burger as a recipe: patty with your cooking loss, bun, cheese, salad, sauces and wrapper; then build the meal by adding the fries with their oil and the drink. It gives you the cost per burger, per meal and the price for your margin.