Recipe costing: what a plate really costs you

Food cost per plate is the cost of every ingredient as used, after cleaning loss and scrap, divided by portions. Worked in rupees for one dish.

To work out food cost per plate, take what each ingredient costs as it goes into the dish, correct for what you lose in cleaning and trimming, add an allowance for scrap, and divide the batch cost by the number of plates it serves. Then compare that figure with your menu price. Most kitchens skip the yield and scrap steps, and that is why their margins on paper are better than the margins in the till.

Below is one dish worked through in rupees, step by step. All figures are illustrative. Use your own purchase rates and your own measured yields.

Why is the purchase rate not the real cost?

You pay for 1 kg of chicken, but some of that kilo is skin, fat and bone you throw away. You pay for a kilo of onions, then peel them. The rate on the supplier's bill is the cost of what you bought, not of what ended up on the plate.

The fix is a single adjustment:

Usable cost per kg = purchase rate ÷ yield

If chicken costs ₹240 a kg and you keep 75 percent of it after cleaning, the usable cost is ₹240 ÷ 0.75 = ₹320 a kg. Every recipe line should use that usable cost, not the bill rate.

How do I measure yield in my own kitchen?

Weigh it. Take one normal purchase lot, weigh it as it arrives, clean or prep it the way your kitchen usually does, and weigh it again.

Yield = weight after prep ÷ weight as purchased

Repeat this over three or four deliveries and use the average. Yield changes with the supplier, the season and the person doing the prep, so a figure you guessed once will drift. Keep the number per item and per supplier if you buy the same item from more than one party.

Can you work a full example in rupees?

Take a chicken curry made in a batch of 10 plates. All rates and yields below are illustrative.

Ingredient	Quantity used (after prep)	Purchase rate	Yield	Usable rate	Line cost
Chicken (curry cut)	1.5 kg	₹240/kg	75%	₹320/kg	₹480
Onions	0.9 kg	₹40/kg	90%	₹44.44/kg	₹40
Tomatoes	0.6 kg	₹50/kg	95%	₹52.63/kg	₹31.58
Ginger-garlic paste	0.1 kg	₹200/kg	100%	₹200/kg	₹20
Cooking oil	0.15 litre	₹160/litre	100%	₹160/litre	₹24
Curd	0.2 kg	₹80/kg	100%	₹80/kg	₹16
Whole and ground spices	as per recipe	—	—	—	₹35
Coriander (garnish)	0.05 kg	₹100/kg	60%	₹166.67/kg	₹8.33

Step 1: Total ingredient cost. Add the line costs: ₹480 + ₹40 + ₹31.58 + ₹20 + ₹24 + ₹16 + ₹35 + ₹8.33 = ₹654.91, call it ₹655.

Notice what yield did to the chicken. At the bill rate, 1.5 kg would look like ₹360. After cleaning loss it is ₹480. That ₹120 gap on one line is the most common reason a dish costs more than the owner thinks.

Step 2: Add a scrap allowance. Some gravy stays in the pot, some portions are served a little heavy, and now and then a batch is spoiled. Say your kitchen measures this at 5 percent for curries. ₹655 × 1.05 = ₹687.75.

Step 3: Cost per plate. ₹687.75 ÷ 10 plates = ₹68.78 per plate. Round up to ₹69.

Step 4: Selling price check. Say the dish is on the menu at ₹260. Food cost as a share of price is ₹69 ÷ ₹260 = about 26.5 percent, and the plate leaves ₹191 to pay for staff, rent, gas, packaging and profit. Whether that is enough depends on your own overheads, not on someone else's average. What matters is that you now know the actual number and can compare it with the target you set for your restaurant.

If you work backwards from a target, divide the plate cost by the food-cost share you want. A plate costing ₹69 at a target of 30 percent needs a price of at least ₹230.

What should be in a recipe card?

A recipe card is only useful if the kitchen follows it. Each card should include:

Every ingredient, oil, spices and garnish included, with the quantity per batch
The batch size and the number of plates it serves
The portion size in grams or by ladle, so plates come out the same
The usable rate and yield for each line
The scrap allowance used
The date it was last costed

Portion control is the part people let slip. A costing that assumes 10 plates per batch fails as soon as the kitchen serves 9 heavy ones.

Common mistakes in recipe costing

Using bill rates without yield. This understates cost on every item that is cleaned, peeled or deboned, which covers most proteins and vegetables.
Leaving out the small items. Oil, ghee, spices, lemon, garnish and the chutney on the side. Each is a few rupees, and over a whole menu they add up.
Costing once and forgetting. Vegetable and protein prices change week to week. A card costed six months ago can be wrong by a wide margin.
Ignoring scrap. Pretending nothing is wasted makes every dish look cheaper than it is.
Not reconciling with stock. If your recipe costs say you should have used 15 kg of chicken this week and your stock count says 18 kg went out, something is off: portions, waste or theft. Our guide to restaurant inventory and food costing shows how to run that check.

When does a simple plate cost not apply?

Some dishes need extra handling. Combo meals and thalis should be costed component by component, with each part costed as its own sub-recipe and then added up. Base gravies and prepped items that go into several dishes are costed once as a batch and charged to each dish per gram used. Buffets cannot be costed per plate in advance; cost them per head from what was actually consumed over a few services.

Recipe costing also does not tell you when to buy. Once you know how much of each ingredient a day's covers use, you can set stock triggers using the reorder point formula, with a short safety cover for perishables so they do not age in the cold room.

FAQ

What is yield in recipe costing? Yield is the share of an ingredient you can actually use after cleaning, trimming, peeling or deboning. If 1 kg of onions gives 900 g after peeling, the yield is 90 percent. You buy the full kilo but cook with only 900 g, so each usable gram costs more than the purchase rate suggests.

How is scrap different from yield loss? Yield loss happens during prep and is part of the recipe. Scrap is what is lost later: a burnt batch, gravy left in the pot, a spilled plate, a portion that goes back to the kitchen. Yield loss belongs in each ingredient line. Scrap is usually added as an allowance on the whole batch.

How often should I recost a recipe? Recost whenever a main ingredient's purchase rate moves noticeably, when you change a supplier, or when you change the recipe or the portion size. For everything else, a review once a quarter is enough. Start with the dishes that sell the most and use the costliest ingredients, because that is where a stale cost hurts you most.

Should gas, oil and spices be part of the plate cost? Oil, spices, garnish and condiments go into the plate cost, even if each one seems small, because together they add up across a whole batch. Gas, electricity and staff wages are usually kept as overheads and covered by the margin, not costed into each recipe line. Whichever method you choose, use it the same way for every dish.