Menu price calculator
From ingredient cost to the two prices that matter: the menu and the delivery app.
Menu price = ingredient cost ÷ target food-cost %. A ₹58 dish at a 30% target prices at ₹193, round to ₹199. For delivery apps, gross the price up by dividing by (1 − commission%): the same dish priced to survive a 25% commission is ₹258, which is why smart menus run separate delivery pricing.
Delivery price = dine-in price ÷ (1 − commission%): the gross-up that keeps your margin identical after Zomato/Swiggy take 18–30%. Round to menu-friendly ₹9/₹5 endings. CountStand's menu engineering report finds the dishes worth repricing first.
How should you price a dish on your menu?
Dividing ingredient cost by your target food-cost percentage gives the minimum viable price, the number below which the dish works against you. The actual menu price then answers three more questions: what do comparable places nearby charge, what does the guest believe this dish is worth, and where does it sit in your menu psychology?
Charm pricing works in India: ₹199 reads a full band cheaper than ₹205. Anchoring works too, one deliberately premium item makes the rest of the section feel reasonable. And the dish you most want to sell should be top-right of its section with a box around it, priced for margin, not modesty.
Reprice on data, not anniversaries. A supplier increase that moves a dish two points deserves a price response this month, not at the annual menu print.
Why price dine-in and delivery differently?
Plate cost ₹96 (chicken, rice, masala, fuel, packaging). At a 32% target, the dine-in floor is 96 ÷ 0.32 = ₹300, call it ₹299.
On a delivery app at 25% effective commission, ₹299 returns only ₹224, dropping your realised margin below plan. The commission-surviving price is 299 ÷ (1 − 0.25) = ₹399. That 33% uplift is why most serious operators run separate delivery menus, and why identical pricing across channels is usually an unexamined loss.
Check the delivered-price ceiling too: at ₹399 plus platform fees, are you still competitive on the listing page? If not, the answer may be a smaller delivery portion at ₹349 rather than absorbing the commission on the full plate.
Where do restaurant menu prices go wrong?
The three classic failures: pricing from the neighbour’s menu instead of your own costs (their rent, volume and portions are not yours); spreading margin evenly across the menu instead of engineering it (beverages and starters should over-earn so proteins can compete); and never revisiting delivery pricing after commission renegotiations change the math.
The discipline that fixes all three is per-dish costing kept live, which is recipe-linked inventory, not a spreadsheet from last Diwali.
Asked by owners like you
How should I price a dish on my menu?
Start from cost: ingredient cost ÷ target food-cost % gives the floor. Then sanity-check against the neighbourhood (what do comparable places charge?), perceived value, and menu psychology, ₹199 outsells ₹201, and your highest-margin dish should sit where eyes land first.
Should delivery prices be higher than dine-in?
Almost always yes. Zomato/Swiggy commissions run 18–30% plus discounts you co-fund. Dividing your dine-in price by (1 − commission%) keeps the same rupee margin per order. Most chains run 15–30% higher prices on apps for exactly this reason.
What is menu engineering?
Sorting dishes by popularity × profitability into stars (promote), plowhorses (reprice), puzzles (reposition) and dogs (cut). It needs live sales + recipe-cost data per dish, the report CountStand generates automatically.
Price once. Track forever.
CountStand’s menu engineering flags the dishes to reprice, promote or cut, from your real sales data.
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