Recipe Cost & Cost-Per-Serving Calculator
List each ingredient with the quantity you use and what one unit of it costs, and this calculator adds up the total cost of the dish, divides it by the number of servings, and — if you set a target food-cost percentage — suggests a menu price per serving. It is built for home cooks pricing a bake sale, meal-preppers tracking cost per portion, and small-kitchen operators sanity-checking a plate price before it hits the menu.
Ingredients
Cost per serving
$2.00
$12.00 total ÷ 6 servings
Total recipe cost
$12.00
Menu price / serving
$6.67
Per-ingredient cost
Ingredient cost contribution
How it works
Each ingredient's line cost is its quantity multiplied by its unit cost — 2 lb of flour at $1.50/lb is $3.00. The tool sums every line into a total recipe cost and keeps the full unrounded value while it adds, so rounding only happens on the numbers you actually see. Enter unit costs in whatever unit is convenient (per pound, per cup, per egg) as long as the quantity uses the same unit; the math does not care which unit you pick, only that the two agree.
Cost per serving is the total recipe cost divided by the number of servings you enter. This is the headline number for anyone comparing a home-cooked portion against a store-bought or restaurant equivalent, or splitting a batch cost across a week of lunches. Because servings guards against division by zero, the calculator requires at least one serving before it will return a result.
If you set a target food-cost percentage, the tool back-solves a suggested menu price with the classic restaurant formula: total cost ÷ (target % ÷ 100) ÷ servings. A $12.00 recipe serving 6 at a 30% food-cost target suggests $6.67 per plate, because $2.00 of cost is meant to be 30% of the price. It is a starting point for pricing, not a final menu price — you still layer in your own judgment about your market and portion sizes.
Frequently asked questions
What food-cost percentage should I target?+
Full-service restaurants commonly aim for a food cost of roughly 25–35% of the menu price, which is why a 30% default is a reasonable middle-of-the-road starting point. Lower percentages (higher markups) are typical for items with cheap ingredients like pasta, coffee, or soda, while premium proteins and seafood often run higher. The right number depends entirely on your concept, your local prices, and what your customers will pay — treat the suggested price as a floor to reason from, not a rule.
Does this account for waste, trim loss, and yield?+
Not automatically. The calculator costs the quantity you type in, so if you buy a whole chicken but only use the breast, or lose weight to trimming and cooking, your real usable cost is higher than the raw purchase price. The common fix is to enter the yield-adjusted quantity or an effective unit cost — for example, if only 70% of a purchased item ends up in the dish, divide its unit cost by 0.70 before entering it. Building that habit keeps cost per serving honest.
Is labor, overhead, and packaging included in the price?+
No. This tool measures ingredient (food) cost only. Labor, rent, utilities, equipment, packaging, and payment fees are real costs that the food-cost method deliberately leaves out — that is exactly why the target percentage is well below 100%: the remaining share of the price is meant to cover everything else and leave a profit. Use the suggested menu price as an ingredient-cost baseline, then confirm it clears your full costs before you commit to it.