Free recipe costing template for Excel

1. 1

   Start from the recipe card

   Write down the ingredients and the net quantity the recipe uses, for the portions it makes. If every cook uses a different amount, the costing is worthless.

2. 2

   Measure the yield

   Weigh the produce before and after cleaning or cooking it a few times and note the average. If you keep half of a whole hake, its yield is 50 %.

3. 3

   Work out the gross quantity and its cost

   Gross weight = net weight ÷ yield. To get 1.8 kg of cleaned hake you buy 3.6 kg. Multiply the gross quantity by the purchase price on your invoice, excluding VAT.

4. 4

   Get the cost per portion

   Add up the cost of every ingredient, divide by the portions and add an error margin, for example 5 %, in case a portion comes out bigger or a price goes up.

5. 5

   Set the selling price

   Divide the cost per portion by your target food cost to get the price excluding VAT, then add VAT. Use the VAT rate that applies to food you serve; in Spain it's 10 % for eating in.

If you haven't weighed your own produce yet, these averages will get you started. They are the percentage of each product left after preparing it.

Averages from the US Foods produce yield guide, based on the US Department of Agriculture's "Food Yields" handbook. The guide itself warns that actual yields vary with size, quality and season. In the example we use 80 % for potatoes and this table gives 63 %: that's why it pays to weigh your own.

• Costing the net weight

  Cost comes from what you buy gross, not from what reaches the plate. If you cost the net weight, every portion looks cheaper than it is.

• Forgetting the small things

  Oil, salt, spices, bread and garnish. On their own they're cents, but they add up in every portion, every day.

• Mixing prices with and without VAT

  If some purchase prices include VAT and others don't, the cost comes out inflated and can't be compared. Always use the invoice prices excluding VAT.

• Not updating it

  A recipe costing is valid on the day you do it. When the price of a key ingredient or your supplier changes, work it out again.

• Unstandardised portions

  If the kitchen serves 200 g of hake instead of 180 g, the fish in each dish costs 11 % more without anything changing on the menu.

• Forgetting packaging for delivery

  If the dish also goes out for delivery, add the box, the bag and the cutlery to the cost of that portion.

A preparation you use in several dishes, such as a stock, a sauce or a dough, is costed separately, as a recipe of its own. Divide its cost by the litres or kilos it makes and you have its price per litre or per kilo. Then add it to each dish as an ingredient, with a 100 % yield, because you already counted the waste when you made it.

For example, if five litres of stock cost you €6, each litre comes to €1.20. A dish that uses 0.2 litres adds €0.24 of stock.

The ten portions of hake with potatoes cost €45.97, so each portion comes to €4.60, or €4.83 with a 5 % error margin. With a 30 % target food cost, the price excluding VAT is €4.83 ÷ 0.30 = €16.10, and €17.71 with 10 % VAT. If you put it on the menu at €17.50, the price excluding VAT is €15.91: the actual food cost is 30.4 % and each portion leaves you €11.08 for staff, premises and profit.

There's no food cost that works for everyone. It comes from what your staff, rent and other costs add up to, and the profit you want. The calculator starts at 30 %: change it to yours, taken from your profit and loss account.

Recipe costing tells you what each dish should cost. What you really spend shows up when you set it against what you sell. In Platomico, with your recipes loaded, consumption tracking in Analytics tells you which ingredients you used in each period and what they cost, based on what you sold. It's included in the Growth plan.