Actual food cost calculator
Turn your inventory counts and purchases into actual food cost, and see what the gap to your theoretical food cost is worth each month and each year. Nothing you enter leaves your browser.
The value of food on hand at the start of the period: last count's closing figure.
Everything received in the period, net of credits and returns.
What your recipes say food cost should be at this sales mix; the plate cost calculator gives it dish by dish.
- Food used (cost of goods)
- $31,800
- Over theoretical, a month
- $2,800
- A year at this rate
- $33,600
Illustration only, not advice. The example figures are placeholders, so use your own counts. Actual food cost is opening inventory plus purchases minus closing inventory, divided by food sales. Bands for the gap are rules of thumb: within 1 point close, up to 2 points worth a look, more than that well over.
Actual and theoretical food cost
Theoretical food cost is what your recipes say food should cost at the sales you made: every dish costed out, weighted by how many sold. Actual food cost is what you really used, measured by counting what is on the shelves. The gap between them is food that was bought but never sold: waste, over-portioning, spoilage, theft, staff meals and unrecorded comps.
Food used = opening inventory + purchases − closing inventory
Actual food cost % = food used ÷ food sales × 100
Getting the inputs right
- Count the same way every time: same day of the week, same time, same units and prices, ideally the last supplier price.
- Purchases are what arrived in the period, net of credits and returns, not what was paid.
- Use food sales only. If you count beverage separately, work out beverage cost the same way against beverage sales.
A worked example
The calculator opens on an example month: $18,500 of food on hand at the start, $31,200 of purchases and $17,900 left at the end, against $100,000 of food sales.
$18,500 + $31,200 − $17,900 = $31,800 used, so $31,800 ÷ $100,000 = 31.8%
The recipes say food cost should be 29%, so actual is 2.8 points over theoretical: about $2,800 a month, or $33,600 a year, of food that went somewhere other than a guest's plate.
Reading the result
A gap of a point or less is about as close as counts get. Up to two points is worth a look; more than that usually has a cause you can find and fix. If the result comes out under theoretical, check the counts and recipe costs first: that is rarely real.
More free tools
Food cost running over theoretical?
An operations review finds where the gap goes: ordering, receiving, prep, portioning, waste and comps.