RECIPE COSTER

TICKET #47
Rony Thomas · Kitchen Operations · La Grange, Kentucky — the math behind a calm, profitable dinner line.

Every plate that leaves the line carries two prices: what it ought to cost and what the customer is willing to pay. The space between them is your margin — and a menu dies in that space, either giving away profit or pushing a number nobody'll order. Cost your plate before it's on the menu, run the yield on every cut, and you'll sleep through a rush. This tool does exactly what my prep sheet does — with no spreadsheet panic.

Step 1 · The Plate Build

Portions are in grams; pay what you actually paid per pack/box, bought-as weight. (See the yield rule below before trusting a number.)

Yield %: 100 = buy it, use it all. 65 = a pork shoulder that loses trim & bone to the smoker. The cost per usable gram is recomputed from your yield — this is where kitchens quietly bleed.

Step 2 · Portion & Overhead
Step 3 · Price It

A plate that's 38% food cost is a house special that feeds guests, not the books. A plate at 22% is either wasting the product or underwhelming the plate.

TRUE INGREDIENT COST / PORTION
$0.00
TOTAL COST / PORTION (ingredient + pack + labor)
$0.00
SELL PRICE AT TARGET FOOD-COST %
$0.00
ItemGrams / portionCost / portion
Ingredient subtotal / portion$0.00
House Rules I Run Every Plate Through
  1. Yield is a confession. If you paid for a 10 lb brisket and only 6.5 lb of cooked sliceable meat lands on the board, that 35% shrink is in the plate from the minute you buy it. Cost on cooked yield, always.
  2. The garnish is money. A lime wedge, a sauce side, a pickled onion — thirty cents across four hundred covers is $120/night walking off the pass. Nothing leaves free.
  3. Benchmark your own menu. Pull every plate's true food-cost % once a quarter and sort high-to-low. The dish nobody orders and that bleeds cost gets cut, not defended.
  4. Price to the guest, not the pride. A $28 'heritage pork chop' at 40% food cost is charity; a $19 burger at 26% is a workhorse that turns the room. Know which you actually need.
  5. Salt, spice, and chef's taste don't count — yet. They're labor and seasonings, and if you stop tracking them they'll quietly buy a new fryer.
__ TICKET CHECKLIST — BEFORE IT HITS THE MENU __ [ ] Every ingredient costed on COOKED yield, not bought weight [ ] Trash & trim accounted for (bones, peel, wilt) [ ] Garnish and sauce sides itemized as their own line [ ] Overhead/labor loaded — menu price is not just ingredients [ ] Food-cost % inside our 28–34 band (or deliberately a loss leader) [ ] One person owns the cost sheet and re-checks it on every vendor price hike [ ] Rework the numbers monthly — cost is a live animal, not a framed plaque
Why this matters to a neighborhood: a kitchen that costs its plates honestly can keep its prices fair, pay its crew, and still stand. A kitchen that guesses makes the guest pay for the guess — one way or the other. Feed people well and keep the doors open; that's the whole craft.
Download data twin (.json) Top
— small batch · run your yield · pay your crew —