Restaurant food cost percentage calculator
Enter your opening inventory, purchases, closing inventory, and food sales to get your cost of food used and your food cost percentage. You can also see how far you are from your target.
Your numbers
Everything you enter stays in your browser.
Your results
- Food cost percentage
- 29.2%
- Cost of food used
- $35,000
- Food gross profit
- $85,000
- Food cost at your target
- $36,000
- Under your target by
- $1,000
How it is calculated
Cost of food used is opening inventory plus purchases, minus closing inventory. Food cost percentage is that cost divided by food sales, times 100.
The target comparison multiplies your food sales by your target percentage to get the food cost you would have at target, and shows the gap in dollars.
Get this number every day, without the spreadsheet
Sturgeon works this out from your live POS, invoices, schedules, and waste log, so you see it daily instead of when someone finds the time.
- Food cost & wasteWaste logging that corrects food costLog spoilage, comps, and overprep as they happen. Sturgeon subtracts them from what you bought, so food cost reflects what actually earned revenue, not what you paid.
- Recipes & inventoryRecipes that deduct stock as they sellLive stock and real measures on every recipe. Scale to any yield, convert to any unit, and let inventory deduct itself as items sell. No clipboard.
Questions
What period should I use?
Any period for which you have both inventory counts, usually a week or a month. Use food sales for the same period, so the two figures line up.
Should purchases include beverages?
Only if the food sales you enter include them. Keep the cost and the sales on the same footing: food with food, or food and beverage with food and beverage.
Why is my result different from my POS report?
A POS report usually shows a theoretical cost from recipes and sales. This calculator uses what you actually bought and counted, so the difference is waste, portioning, and unrecorded loss.
More calculators
- Prime cost calculatorRestaurant prime cost calculatorCost of goods sold plus labor as a percentage of sales, split into its two parts.
- Recipe cost calculatorRestaurant recipe cost calculatorPlate cost from your ingredients and yield, and the menu price that hits your target.
- Waste cost calculatorRestaurant food waste cost calculatorWhat your waste costs a week and a year, as a share of food sales.
See your own numbers in Sturgeon in under a week, with your POS connected, your forecasts calibrated, and Stu answering. White-glove onboarding is included.
No credit card. No six-month contract. Your data stays yours.