Food cost: what every dish really costs you
Food cost is the cost of a dish’s ingredients divided by its selling price excluding VAT. It tells you whether a dish makes money or quietly loses it. FortyCovers calculates it for every item on your menu and keeps it up to date when supplier prices change.
How food cost is calculated
Add up the cost of each ingredient in the quantity used, divide by the net selling price and multiply by one hundred. For example, 120 g of spaghetti, 80 g of guanciale, 40 g of pecorino and two eggs come to €2.91 in ingredients; on a carbonara sold at the right price that is a 24.6% food cost.
The maths is simple. Keeping it true is the hard part: prices change with every invoice, products come in cases and sacks, and nobody has time to redo forty dishes.
What FortyCovers does for you
- Reads Italian electronic invoices (XML) to the cent and updates your ingredient prices
- Paper delivery notes can be photographed and read
- Understands cases, sacks and packs and converts them to kilos or litres
- Shows food cost, margin and the weight of each ingredient for every dish
- Tells you what a dish over target should be priced at
- Flags a number it can’t read instead of guessing
Real food cost comes from what you sell
A hundred margheritas and ten fillets don’t have the same food cost as ten margheritas and a hundred fillets. Enter how many of each dish you sold and FortyCovers calculates your restaurant’s real average food cost, not the average of your recipes.
Pricing
Food cost, recipes and invoice reading are in the Locale plan, €99 a month excluding VAT, together with P&L, rotas, stock and the control centre.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good food cost percentage?
It depends on the restaurant and the dish. Rather than one number for everyone, what matters is knowing each dish’s figure and how it changes.
Does food cost include VAT?
No. Food cost is calculated on the selling price excluding VAT, and that is how FortyCovers calculates it.
Read next
- Restaurant management softwareRestaurant management software that brings together commission-free bookings, floor plan, food cost, P&L, staff rotas and stock. From €59 a month, no contract.
- Commission-free online bookingsTake online bookings from your restaurant’s own website with no commission on covers: closures and holidays handled, confirmation emails in three languages, floor plan included. From €59 a month.
- TheFork alternativeLooking for a TheFork alternative? With FortyCovers guests book from your own website with no commission on covers, plus floor plan, food cost and staff rotas.