A dish can sell all day and still leave too little to cover the work behind it. Before raising the price or shrinking the portion, check what one serving actually costs and how many you sell.
Food cost percentage is useful, but it is only one view. The money left after ingredients still has to pay staff, power, rent and everything else. This guide uses illustrative numbers so you can repeat the check with your own invoices and portions.
Start with the portion you actually serve
Write down every ingredient in one portion, including the oil, sauce and garnish that are easy to miss. Use the price on a recent supplier invoice and the quantity your team actually serves. Keep the ingredient cost and selling price in the same currency.
For a prep recipe, cost the batch first and divide by its usable yield. If a batch produces fewer portions than expected, the cost of each portion rises. Our bakery recipe cost guide walks through that calculation and includes a calculator.
List packaging separately so you know whether you are comparing ingredient cost alone or a wider takeaway cost. Use the same definition for every dish you compare.
Calculate food cost percentage
Food cost percentage equals ingredient cost per portion divided by selling price, multiplied by 100. In this worked example, a chicken sandwich costs $2.40 in ingredients and sells for $8. Its food cost percentage is 30%.
The arithmetic is $2.40 ÷ $8 × 100 = 30%. The remaining $5.60 is the selling price less ingredients. It is not net profit.
Use comparable figures: if one price includes tax and another does not, the comparison will be misleading. Agree a consistent basis with whoever handles your books. There is no single percentage that makes every restaurant or dish successful.
Look at dollars left as well as the percentage
Compare that sandwich with a soup costing $1.20 and selling for $5. The soup has a lower food cost percentage, 24%, but leaves $3.80 before other costs. The sandwich leaves $5.60.
Selling twenty sandwiches leaves $112 after ingredients. Twenty soups leave $76. Those figures say nothing yet about labour, cooking time, waste, packaging or whether you can sell twenty of either item. They simply show why the lowest food cost percentage does not automatically identify your best dish.
Look at portion cost, amount left per sale and actual sales together. Then consider what each dish asks of the kitchen during your busiest hour.
Separate a recipe estimate from actual food use
A recipe tells you what a portion should use. Your stock count tells you what the business actually used over a period. Waste, over-portioning, staff meals and unrecorded use can make those numbers differ.
For a simple period check, opening food inventory plus purchases minus closing food inventory gives the value used, provided the counts and valuation are consistent. Compare it with food sales for the same dates, and account for transfers or adjustments with whoever manages your books.
Keep this separate from a dish-level recipe percentage. A difference is a reason to investigate portions, waste and records, not proof that someone made a mistake.
Change one thing and measure it
If a dish leaves too little, first confirm the invoice price and actual serving size. Then consider a supplier change, a recipe adjustment, less avoidable waste or a menu-price change. Do not cut an ingredient customers value simply to reach an arbitrary percentage.
Try one change on one dish. Record the date, portion cost, selling price and units sold before and after. Watch customer response and preparation time alongside the numbers. A higher margin on a dish nobody orders is not much help.
If you show prices in both dollars and lira, check the USD/LBP menu-price routine before publishing a new price.
A weekly check you can keep doing
Pick five important dishes, not your whole menu on day one. Include a bestseller, an ingredient-heavy dish, a takeaway item, a slow seller and something the kitchen prepares in batches.
- Check supplier prices and usable yields.
- Weigh a normal portion during service.
- Record ingredient cost and the amount left per sale.
- Compare units sold over the same period.
- Note waste and packaging separately.
- Choose one change and review it next week.
On Simplrr plans that include inventory, ingredients and recipes can help you organize costing. Your invoices, portion checks and physical stock counts still matter. The software does not know what was spilled or served unless the relevant records reflect it.
Keep the next step small
Cost one familiar dish today. Bring its ingredient list and invoices, and check the maths with the person who prepares it. Then compare the result with what you charge and how often it sells.
Explore Simplrr for Lebanon or start free to build your menu; ask which plan includes the inventory tools before choosing a paid plan. The demo is useful for exploring the order workflow, not for validating your own recipe costs.
Further reading
Lightspeed's menu-engineering guide discusses evaluating menu items using costs and sales. The worked sandwich and soup figures here are illustrative; use your own business costs before making a pricing decision.