Product Description

For restaurants focused on profit, accurately calculating the cost of each menu item is crucial. This process not only helps in setting sales targets but also in reducing overhead costs. Effective management of food costs enables setting accurate, competitive prices, achieving better profit margins for each item and the menu overall.

The Food Cost Calculator template for Excel is a valuable tool designed to facilitate the precise calculation of costs for any menu item.

With this tool, you can easily calculate the expenses for primary and secondary ingredients, along with preparation and utility costs. It also allows to add images of your dishes, accompanied by brief descriptions or preparation instructions and allergen information.

Benefits of the Food Cost Calculator template

• Simplified Food Cost Calculation for Restaurants: our template simplifies the process of calculating food costs and evaluating dish profitability, making it incredibly straightforward.
• Customizable: with customizable options, you can fine-tune this food cost calculator to perfectly match your restaurant’s operational needs.
• Instant Profit Margin Insights: experience real-time profit margin and cost calculations with every menu item adjustment. Experiment with various pricing strategies to optimize your profit potential.

How to use the Food Cost Calculator spreadsheet

Adding ingredients

Before you start to calculate the food cost of a certain recipe, it’s recommended to take the time to fill in your ingredients first in the Ingredients tab. You can add additional information like EAN number, supplier, but most importantly price and Unit because these fields will be used to calculate the cost of your recipes.

Adding a recipe

1. Enter the name of the ingredients for your recipe in the cell “Name” (potatoes, pasta, lettuce,…). A dropdown will appear with ingredients you filled in in the other tab
2. Enter the quantity of the ingredient needed for preparation in Grams (100 Gm, 200 Gm)
3. The price of the ingredient will be fetched from the Ingredients tab
4. “Total Price” calculates cost of by multiplying cost of ingredient per amount of weight used in your recipe

In the cell “Selling Price” put the price of the dish as per your menu or the price that this dish will sell for including VAT (or sales tax). In the cell “VAT %”, fill in the percentage of VAT charged in the selling price.

Food Cost Percentage calculates the % of total food cost compared to the selling price excl. VAT.
Net Profit calculates the net profit you make on this recipe.

Adding more recipes

Right-click the tab and click “Duplicate” from the menu that appears. You can rename the tab to reflect the name of the recipe.

The food cost calucalator template for Excel or Google Sheets is the ideal solution if you’re just getting started with food costing. Make sure to check out our restaurant inventory management template for Excel if you want to keep track of stock.