Food cost calculator
Ingredient cost ÷ selling price, in one glance, with the verdict and the price that fixes it.
Food-cost percentage = ingredient cost ÷ menu selling price × 100. For Indian restaurants a healthy overall band is 28–32%: QSR and street formats run leaner (25–30%), fine dining higher (30–35%). Above ~32%, margin is leaking, reprice, re-portion, or re-engineer the dish.
Food-cost % = ingredient cost ÷ selling price × 100. Indian ideal band: 28–32% overall (street/QSR runs lower, fine dining higher). CountStand computes this live per dish from recipes and flags variance against actual stock.
How does the food-cost formula actually work?
Food-cost percentage answers one question: of every rupee a guest pays for a dish, how many paise did the ingredients cost you? The formula is ingredient cost ÷ selling price × 100, but the number is only as honest as the ingredient cost you feed it.
Cost at purchase price, not memory. Include yield loss: a kilo of paneer at ₹380 that loses 8% in cutting effectively costs ₹413 per usable kilo. Include the garnish, the oil, the butter on the naan, the ₹4 items that never make it into mental math are usually 2–3 points of the final percentage.
Work per dish first, then roll up. An overall 30% can hide a biryani running 42% subsidised by beverages at 12%, and the 42% dish is often your best seller, which is exactly how a busy restaurant loses money.
What does a real food-cost calculation look like?
Paneer 180g at ₹380/kg = ₹68.40 (after 8% yield loss: ₹74.35). Butter, cream and masala base = ₹22. Tomato-onion gravy portion = ₹11. Garnish and kasuri methi = ₹3. Plate cost: about ₹110.
At a menu price of ₹349, that is 110 ÷ 349 = 31.5%, inside the band, but with no room for portion drift. If the kitchen ladles 210g of paneer on a busy night, the same dish quietly becomes 36% and nobody notices until month-end.
The fix is rarely a price hike alone: standardise the portion (a 180g scoop), lock the recipe, and re-check supplier rates quarterly. A ₹20/kg paneer increase moves this one dish by a full point.
What is a good food-cost percentage by format?
QSR, chaat and snack formats: 25–30%, high-margin fried items and beverages pull the blend down. Casual dining: 28–32%. Biryani and protein-led menus: 32–36% is common and survivable at volume. Fine dining: 30–35%, carried by beverage margins and ticket size.
Two numbers matter more than the average: the trend (a band creeping 1% a month is a supplier, portion or theft problem compounding) and the gap between theoretical and actual consumption. The theoretical number is this calculator; the actual is your stock. The gap between them is wastage and pilferage, in most Indian kitchens, 2–4% of purchases.
Asked by owners like you
What is a good food cost percentage in India?
Most healthy Indian restaurants land between 28% and 32% overall. Quick-service and street formats often run 25–30% because of high-margin items like chaat, beverages and fried snacks; fine dining tolerates 30–35% on premium proteins. Track it per dish, not just overall, averages hide the leaks.
How do I calculate food cost for a dish?
Cost every ingredient at purchase price (including yield loss after cleaning/trimming), add them up per portion, then divide by the menu price. A ₹62 plate sold at ₹220 runs 28.2% food cost.
Why is my food cost high even with good prices?
The usual culprits: portion drift (no standard recipe), wastage, supplier price creep nobody re-checked, and pilferage. A recipe-linked inventory system compares theoretical use against actual stock and flags the variance, that gap IS your missing margin.
Does this calculator store my data?
No. It runs entirely in your browser, nothing is uploaded, no login, no email wall.
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