Break a recipe or product cost into per-serving and per-unit pricing — foundation for profitable menu pricing.
Cost per serving
6 servings
$0.98
Total recipe cost
$5.90
Highest-cost ingredient
$3.00
Butter
The per-serving cost is the foundation of every pricing decision: menu prices, wholesale quotes, and product MSRPs all start here. Use package-level math (cost ÷ size × used) rather than guessing from memory — supplier pricing shifts constantly.
Units don’t need to match between the package and the used amount as long as you’re consistent: if your package is in grams, enter used amount in grams.
line_cost = (package_cost ÷ package_size) × used_amount
total_cost = sum of line_costs
cost_per_serving = total_cost ÷ servings
Cost-Plus Pricing
Set a retail price from your cost and target margin — with a sanity check against competitor pricing.
Meal Prep Cost
Add up ingredient costs for a batch of prepped meals — see cost per meal, per person, and a weekly projection.
Profit Margin
Gross margin, net margin, and markup — convert between them cleanly so you do not mix up 40% margin and 40% markup.
Add each ingredient with its cost and the amount the recipe actually uses. The calculator sums real used cost, divides by the number of finished servings, and gives you a per-serving food cost. A target food-cost-percent slider lets you back-solve the menu price: at 30% food cost a $2.40 serving needs to sell for $8. You can also see total batch cost and per-unit cost if your output is bottles, jars, or packaged units rather than plate servings.
Restaurants and food makers that do not know cost-per-serving accidentally lose money on their best-selling item. Buying chicken at $4/lb instead of $6/lb is meaningless until you know what that turns into per plate. This is also the number wholesale buyers and chefs ask for when negotiating with a producer on brothh — "what is your cost on this" is a real question with a real answer, and it should not be a guess. Producers who quote pricing without knowing this number end up either over-charging customers or under-charging themselves.
The "cost" of an ingredient is what you paid, including freight and packaging if applicable. Yield loss (trim, peel, pit) should be reflected in the amount used — if you bought 5 lb of squash but only 4 lb made it into the recipe, enter 4 lb of cost. Restaurant food-cost targets typically run 28-35% of menu price; producers selling shelf-stable goods aim higher because packaging and shipping eat margin. Re-run the math seasonally — ingredient costs drift more than people remember.