Food Cost Calculator

For most Indian restaurants a healthy food cost is 28% to 35%. Under 25% is very profitable, but check your portion is not too small for what you charge. Between 35% and 40% is a bit high, and above 40% the dish is barely paying for itself. Fine dining and bars usually run lower, buffets and QSRs higher, so compare yourself against your own format rather than a single number.

Divide what the ingredients cost you by what you charge, then multiply by 100. Ingredient cost ÷ Menu price × 100 = food cost %. A portion that costs you ₹120 and sells at ₹400 is 120 ÷ 400 × 100, which is 30%. Use the menu price before GST, and cost the whole batch rather than guessing a single portion.

In this order, because that is the order that actually works: fix your portion sizes so every plate leaves the pass the same, cut the wastage and the trim you are throwing away, re-negotiate the two or three ingredients that make up most of the cost, and only then raise the price. Re-run the costing whenever a supplier rate moves — chicken going from ₹280 to ₹320 a kilo can move a dish two or three points on its own.

Yes. The calculator on this page and the full one behind it are both free, with no sign-up and no trial. You only make an account if you want your costings saved and synced to your phone, and even that is free.

It is built for India. Everything is in rupees, the benchmarks are the ones Indian restaurants, hotels, cafes, cloud kitchens and bakeries actually work to, and the GST question is handled properly — you enter the price before GST, because GST is not your money.

It is the money you spend on ingredients, shown as a share of what you charge. If a portion costs you ₹120 to make and you sell it at ₹400, your food cost is 30%. The other 70% pays for staff, rent, gas, electricity and your profit.

In the calculator, enter the rate you buy at — say ₹400 per kg — then how much you actually use, say 1 kg for the batch. It works out the cost of that line for you. You can mix units freely: buy per kg and use grams, buy per litre and use millilitres.

Cost the whole batch — all the chicken, all the butter, everything that goes in the pot — then say how many portions it serves. The calculator divides it and shows the cost of one portion. This is how professional kitchens cost, and it is far more accurate than guessing a single portion.

Not in the food cost itself. Food cost is only the ingredients, and keeping salaries and rent out is what makes the number comparable from dish to dish. Gas and electricity are a little different, because they are spent cooking that particular portion, so the calculator has an optional Overhead % field for them. Enter them as a percentage of the menu price — most kitchens are around 4% to 8% — and it comes off your profit per portion while your food cost percentage stays ingredients only.

Without GST. GST is not your money — you collect it and pass it on. Using the price with GST will make your food cost look better than it really is.

The calculator is free to use without an account. If you are not logged in, your dishes stay in this browser on this device only: we never receive them and cannot see them, and clearing your browser data will remove them. Log in — with a one-time code we email you — and they move to your account, where you can open them on any device. Only your own account can read them, because our database is set up so one account cannot see another account’s dishes.