Ingredient costs by type: yield, waste and buying

Every kind of ingredient loses weight in its own way: meat loses fat, sinew and juice in the pan; fish loses its head, bones and skin; potatoes lose their peel; a lemon gives you only its juice. So the price per kilo on the invoice is not what a kilo on the plate costs you. One rule covers all of them: cost per usable kg = price per kg bought ÷ your yield, and the yield is something you measure in your own kitchen, on your own scale.

In this guide

This is the overview of ingredient costs by family. Each family has its own detailed guide:

• Meat yield: costing bone, trim and cooking loss
• Whole chicken vs parts: which is cheaper per usable kilo
• Fish and seafood: fillet yield and freshness loss
• Fruit and vegetable yields: build your own table
• Eggs, milk, butter and cheese: costing by weight and count
• Flour, sugar, rice and oil: the staples that move your costs
• Frying oil: cost per batch and when to change it
• Spices and small quantities: costing a pinch
• Chocolate, nuts and premium ingredients: protecting your margin

For the buying itself (where, how much and how often), see how to buy ingredients for a small food business.

One rule for every ingredient

Three weights matter:

1. As-purchased weight: what the scale at the wholesaler says, or what is on the invoice.
2. Prepped weight: what is left after peeling, boning, trimming or filleting.
3. Cooked weight: what is left after grilling, frying, roasting or simmering.

From those you get two yields: prep yield (prepped ÷ as purchased) and cooking yield (cooked ÷ prepped). If you portion raw, prep yield is enough. If you portion cooked, you need both:

cost per cooked kg = price per kg bought ÷ (prep yield × cooking yield)

The formula and how to measure it step by step are in the guide to yield percentage: as purchased vs edible portion. If you would rather not do the division by hand, the yield calculator gives you the real cost per usable kg after trim and cooking loss.

What stays the same across every family is the principle: the numbers are yours. A table online does not know your supplier, the size of this week's potatoes, or how closely you trim. Every percentage in this guide is an example to show the arithmetic.

Beef, pork and lamb

Meat loses weight twice. First at the trimming board: fat cap, silverskin, sinew, bone. Then in the pan or oven, as it gives off water and fat. A quick sear loses some; a long braise or a smoked brisket loses a lot more.

What to measure: as-purchased, trimmed and, if you portion cooked, the cooked weight of a batch. Also note what you do with the trim. If it goes into burgers, a staff meal or a stock, it has value and you can credit it against the trimmed cut.

This is the family where not measuring costs the most, because the meat is expensive and the loss is large. The full method is in the guide to meat yield.

Chicken

With chicken the question is usually not "what is the yield" but "should I buy whole birds or parts". Whole birds are cheaper per kilo, but they leave you with wings, backs and carcasses you have to use, and they cost you butchering time. With parts you pay more per kilo but buy only what the recipe needs.

What to measure: what each part weighs when you break down one of your birds, how long it takes you, and what each part costs where you buy. That tells you which works for you. The method is in the guide to whole chicken vs parts.

Fish and seafood

Whole fish has the most variable yield of any ingredient. A large round fish and a small flatfish look nothing alike once filleted. Fish also has a loss that meat barely has: freshness. What you buy on Monday and have not sold by Wednesday may no longer be good enough to serve raw or even to fry.

What to measure: fillet yield per species, and what you throw away at the end of the week. For frozen seafood, weigh it drained after thawing, because the bag includes ice. All of that is in the guide to fish and seafood.

Fruit and vegetables

Here the loss is peel, seeds, stems, cores and bruised leaves. With lemons and limes you are buying juice, so the yield is measured in millilitres per kilo. Produce is the cheapest family per kilo, but it is also the one whose price and quality change most from week to week.

What to measure: the yield of every item you use often, three times from different purchases, recorded in a table. The guide to fruit and vegetable yields shows you how to build it.

Dairy and eggs

Eggs are sold by the dozen, by the tray or by weight, and recipes ask for them by count or by grams. If you bake, weighing them is safer: a large egg and a small one do not add the same amount. Butter comes in blocks that rarely match your recipe, and some cheeses dry out or lose whey in storage.

What to measure: the average weight of your eggs out of the shell, and the loss on cheese you keep for several days. It is in the guide to eggs, milk, butter and cheese.

Staples: flour, rice, sugar and oil

Staples barely lose anything in prep. Their problem is price: it moves, and because you use them in everything, a few cents per kilo shows up in every dish. Rice and dried beans also gain weight when cooked, so either portion dry or measure how much cooked you get from a dry kilo.

What to measure: the price per kilo every time you buy, and how much you use per week. That shows you which staples carry the most weight in your costs and when stocking up makes sense. See the staples that move your costs. To compare a sack with a bag, the unit price calculator compares pack sizes per kg, litre or unit.

Frying oil

Fryer oil is not used up by one portion; it is used up in batches. Some stays in the food, some is lost or degraded, and at some point you change the whole fill. If you sell fries, fried chicken or doughnuts, oil can weigh more in your costs than you think.

What to measure: litres per fill, how many batches or portions you get before changing it, and how much you top up in between. The full calculation is in the guide to frying oil.

Spices and small quantities

Cumin, paprika, oregano, chilli flakes, a splash of soy sauce. Per dish they are cents, which is why many people leave them out. The trouble is that twenty things worth a few cents add up, and some spices are expensive per kilo.

What to measure: how many grams your teaspoon of each spice weighs (weigh it yourself rather than trusting a chart), or what you spend on seasonings per batch. The guide to spices and small quantities tells you when measuring is worth it and when a fixed amount per dish is enough.

Premium ingredients

Couverture chocolate, pecans, pistachios, aged cheese, prawns. Only a few grams, but they can take half the cost of a product. If their price rises, your margin goes with it.

What to measure: what share of each product's cost the premium ingredient takes, and what happens to the cost when you test an alternative. See chocolate, nuts and premium ingredients.

Summary by family

Worked example: a chicken rice bowl

You sell chicken rice bowls from a small kitchen. These are this kitchen's numbers, as an example; yours will differ.

Chicken. Boneless thighs at $9.00 per kg. You trim off fat and leave 90% of the weight: 9.00 ÷ 0.90 = $10.00 per trimmed kg. On the grill they keep 75% of their trimmed weight: 10.00 ÷ 0.75 = $13.33 per cooked kg. Each bowl gets 150 g of cooked chicken: 0.15 × 13.33 = $2.00.

Rice. $2.40 per kg. You portion 80 g dry: 0.08 × 2.40 = $0.19.

Avocado. $1.20 each. You measured 140 g of usable flesh per avocado, so 1.20 ÷ 0.14 = $8.57 per usable kg. Each bowl gets 50 g: 0.05 × 8.57 = $0.43.

Red onion. $2.00 per kg, 85% yield after peeling and trimming: 2.00 ÷ 0.85 = $2.35 per kg. Each bowl gets 30 g: 0.03 × 2.35 = $0.07.

Lime. $0.30 each, half a lime per bowl: $0.15.

Oil. A 2-litre bottle at $8.00 is $4.00 per litre. About 15 ml per bowl between marinade and grill: 0.015 × 4.00 = $0.06.

Spices and sauce. One batch of marinade and sauce for 40 bowls costs you $8.00: 8.00 ÷ 40 = $0.20.

What the example shows. Chicken is 2.00 ÷ 3.10 = 64.5% of the ingredient cost. If you had costed it at the invoice price with no yield, it would have come out at 0.15 × 9.00 = $1.35, and the bowl at $2.45 instead of $3.10. That is $0.65 per bowl you cannot see. At 50 bowls a day, 26 days a month, that is 1,300 bowls and $845 a month.

The same size of mistake on the onion would barely move the total. That is why you start by measuring the protein. Avocado is second here, which is a good reason to measure your usable flesh per fruit rather than guess.

This total is ingredients only. The loaded cost of the bowl also needs packaging, gas, your time and the waste from bowls you do not sell.

How to put it into practice

1. List the ingredients in your best-selling dishes and rank them by their share of the cost.
2. Measure the yield of the top three this week. They are nearly always proteins.
3. Measure the vegetables you use every day and start your table.
4. Set a fixed amount per dish for spices and sauces, worked out per batch.
5. Re-measure the protein every month and whenever you change supplier.

That gives you an ingredient cost that looks like what actually leaves your kitchen, not like the price per kilo on the wholesaler's shelf.

Do it with the calculator

Put each ingredient into the food cost calculator with its purchase price and your measured yield, and it gives you the real cost per dish with trim and cooking loss already included.