.svg)
.svg)
Recipe Costing Calculator
A free Excel workbook that costs a plate the way it actually eats. Yield adjusted, down to the trim, so you are pricing the food that reaches the guest and not the invoice.
Cost a plate the way it actually eats
Most recipe cards cost the invoice. This one costs the yield. Enter pack size, pack cost, and a yield percentage for every ingredient, and the workbook returns your true cost per usable unit, cost per portion, actual food cost percentage, and the menu price you need to hit your target margin.
- Yield adjusted cost per usable unit on every ingredient line
- Cost per portion, contribution margin, and actual food cost percentage
- The price required to hit the target food cost you set
- A worked short rib example with real pack sizes and yields
Excel .xlsx file. No email required. Opens in Excel, Numbers, and Google Sheets.
What the workbook does
Yield adjusted costing
Trim, peel, shrink, and cook loss are where plate cost hides. Every ingredient line carries its own yield percentage, so you price against the food that reaches the guest and not the weight on the invoice.
A target price, not a guess
Set your own target food cost. The workbook returns the menu price that hits it, and the gap against what you charge today. No industry rule of thumb doing your pricing for you.
The annual number
Enter portions sold per week and the workbook annualizes the price gap. One underpriced entree at forty covers a week is rarely a small number by the end of the year.
How to use it
- Open the Recipe Costing tab. Only the shaded cells take input. Everything else calculates.
- Enter each ingredient: pack size, unit, pack cost straight off the invoice, and a yield percentage.
- Enter the quantity your recipe uses, in the same unit as the pack size.
- Enter how many portions the batch yields and what you charge for the plate today.
- Set your target food cost percentage. Read the required price and the gap.
The Example tab is a fully built braised short rib with real pack sizes and yields. Open that one first if you want to see the logic before you touch your own numbers.
Why yield is where recipe costing breaks
Ask most operators for their plate cost and you get a number built from invoice prices. Twelve dollars a pound for short rib, eight ounces on the plate, six dollars of protein. Clean math, wrong answer. That rib comes in bone in with a fat cap, and by the time it is trimmed, braised, and portioned you are buying closer to eighteen dollars of usable pound. The plate cost was never six dollars.
The same gap runs through produce, dairy, and anything portioned by hand. A yield percentage on every line closes it. That is the entire difference between a recipe costing spreadsheet that flatters you and one you can price against. Food cost is half of prime cost, and prime cost is the line that decides whether a good month is actually a profitable one.
Questions operators ask
Do I need Excel to use it?
It is built in Excel and opens in Numbers. Google Sheets imports it fine, though some of the formatting shifts. The formulas hold in all three.
Is it actually free?
Yes. No email, no signup, no trial. Download it and use it.
What yield percentage should I enter?
Run your own test. Weigh what comes in, weigh what is usable after fabrication, divide. Borrowed yield numbers off the internet are the reason plate costs drift quietly for a year before anyone notices.
How does this connect to prime cost?
Recipe costing fixes the food half. Labor is the other half. Run the prime cost calculator to see where your combined number sits against concept benchmarks, or read the prime cost guide for the formula and the math behind it.
Want this run on your real P&L?
Start with a free diagnostic call. Thirty minutes, operator to operator, before any commitment.
Book My Free Discovery Call →.svg)
Operational intelligence for best-in-class hospitality.
Margin optimization and recovery specialist for independent restaurant groups, hotels and high-volume bars.
© 2026 Terroir & Tactics. All rights reserved.
Diagnostics-first hospitality consulting · San Diego, CA