Calculate your plate cost, food cost percentage, and find the optimal selling price for your recipes
Food cost percentage tells you how much of every rupee you take at the till goes back out on ingredients. Most Indian restaurants should sit between 28% and 35% — above that and margin disappears into portioning, wastage, or vendor pricing. Enter your ingredients below to get plate cost, food cost percentage, and the selling price you'd need to hit your target.
Enter a recipe name and click "AI Generate" to auto-fill ingredients — 5 free generations left
| Ingredient | Quantity | Unit | Price/Unit (₹) | Cost (₹) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ₹0.00 |
Total Plate Cost
₹0.00
Enter your menu price to see food cost %
Industry standard: 28-35%
Add ingredients to see calculations
ChefDesk automatically tracks food costs in real-time. Link recipes to inventory, and watch your costs update automatically when purchase prices change.
Food cost is the money a restaurant spends on the raw ingredients that go into a dish. It's the single biggest controllable expense on the P&L, and it's usually expressed as a percentage of the menu price. A dish that costs ₹80 in ingredients and sells for ₹320 has a food cost percentage of 25% — the remaining 75% covers rent, staff, overheads and profit.
The food cost of a dish is calculated as:
Food Cost % = (Total ingredient cost of the dish ÷ Selling price) × 100
Example: Butter chicken uses ₹95 of chicken, ₹18 of butter, ₹12 of tomatoes and ₹15 of spices — total ₹140. It sells for ₹420. Food cost = (140 ÷ 420) × 100 = 33.3%. That's right in the healthy zone for an Indian full-service restaurant.
| Format | Healthy food cost % | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fine dining | 28–32% | Higher ingredient spend offset by higher ticket size |
| Casual dining | 30–33% | The most common band for Indian full-service |
| QSR | 30–35% | Volume-led; packaging pushes the delivery mix higher |
| Cafes | 25–30% | Beverage-heavy menus pull the average down |
| Bars — beverages | 20–25% | Liquor carries the margin |
| Bars — food | 35–40% | Food often run near cost to drive drink sales |
| Cloud kitchens | 25–30% | No dine-in rent, so food cost discipline is tighter |
| Bakeries | 28–35% | Wastage on unsold stock is the swing factor |
These are targets, not rules. A dish at 40% can still be your most profitable item if it sells in volume and drives high-margin add-ons. What matters is the blended food cost across your whole menu, which is why menu engineering beats per-dish optimisation.
Food cost covers only ingredients. Prime cost adds labour — salaries, wages, staff meals, PF and ESI. Prime cost is the number that actually determines whether a restaurant survives.
For an Indian full-service restaurant, a healthy prime cost is roughly 55–60% of revenue. If your food cost is a disciplined 30% but your labour is running at 35%, you're at 65% prime cost, and rent plus utilities plus overheads will consume whatever's left.
Track both. Food cost weekly, prime cost monthly.
No. Calculate food cost on pre-GST figures on both sides.
On the purchase side, use the base rate you pay your supplier, excluding the GST you can claim as input credit. On the sales side, use your menu price excluding the 5% GST you collect from the customer.
Mixing the two is the most common error we see. A dish selling at ₹420 on the menu is ₹420 pre-GST; the customer pays ₹441 with 5% GST added. Dividing your ingredient cost by ₹441 understates your food cost percentage and makes a marginal dish look healthy.
Note that restaurants under the 5% GST scheme cannot claim input tax credit on purchases. If that applies to you, the GST you pay suppliers is a real cost — include it in your ingredient rates.
When food cost climbs without a menu change, it's almost always one of five things:
A POS that links recipes to live inventory catches all five, because theoretical consumption gets compared against actual stock movement automatically.
Kisi bhi dish ka food cost nikalne ke liye pehle uske andar jaane wale sabhi ingredients ki quantity aur rate note kijiye. Sabhi ingredients ka total rupees me cost jodiye. Us total ko dish ke selling price se divide kijiye aur 100 se multiply kijiye — yehi aapki food cost percentage hai. Upar diya gaya calculator yeh puri calculation ek click me kar deta hai — bas ingredients aur unki quantity daaliye.
Food cost percentage is the share of a dish's selling price spent on the ingredients that go into it. A dish costing ₹80 in ingredients and selling for ₹320 has a food cost of 25%. It's the largest controllable expense in most restaurants.
Divide the total ingredient cost of the dish by its selling price, then multiply by 100. If a butter chicken costs ₹140 in ingredients and sells for ₹420, the food cost is (140 ÷ 420) × 100 = 33.3%.
Most Indian full-service restaurants target 28–33%. QSRs run 30–35%, cafes 25–30%, and cloud kitchens 25–30%. Bars run food higher, around 35–40%, because beverages carry the margin.
Food cost counts ingredients only. Prime cost adds labour. Prime cost should stay under about 60% of revenue for a restaurant to be viable.
No. Use pre-GST figures on both purchase and sale. Restaurants under the 5% scheme that cannot claim input credit should include supplier GST in ingredient rates, since it's a real cost to them.
Standardise portions with scales and portioning tools, renegotiate or rotate suppliers on your top ten ingredients by spend, track wastage daily, and re-cost recipes whenever purchase rates move. Most operators find 3–5 percentage points in portioning alone.
Re-cost your top 20 selling dishes monthly, and immediately whenever a major ingredient's rate moves more than 10%. Software linked to purchase entries does this continuously.
Dish me jitne bhi ingredients lagte hain, unki quantity aur rate note kijiye. Sabhi ka total cost jodiye, phir us total ko dish ke selling price se divide karke 100 se multiply kijiye. Yehi aapka food cost percentage hai. Upar diya calculator yeh puri calculation ek click me kar deta hai.
India me zyadatar full-service restaurants ke liye 28% se 33% theek mana jata hai. QSR aur cafe ke liye 30–35% tak chal jata hai. Isse upar jaane par margin par asar padta hai.
Portion size fix kijiye aur weighing scale use kijiye. Top 10 ingredients ke supplier rates har mahine compare kijiye. Wastage roz record kijiye. Aur jab bhi kisi ingredient ka rate badle, us dish ki costing dobara kijiye.
Turn these costed recipes into a live menu. ChefDesk POS auto-syncs recipe costs, tracks live food cost %, and flags margin drops the moment ingredient prices move.
