Turning a cost guide into recipe costs

A cost guide on its own tells you what ingredients cost. A costed recipe tells you what a dish costs — and that's the number you actually price menus and judge margins against. Here's how one is built on top of the guide.

1. Matching ingredients to the guide

Each ingredient line in a recipe — “2 lb yellow onion,” “6 oz tomatoes” — is matched by name against your cost guide. When the recipe wording doesn't match the invoice name (“tomatoes” vs “Diced Tomatoes 6/#10”), that's what the recipe label field on the cost guide item is for: set the label to tomatoes and the match succeeds.

An ingredient that matches nothing is shown as unmatched and costs $0 — which is a feature, not a bug. An unmatched ingredient is a visible hole in your cost, not a silent under-count. Fix it by adding the item to the guide or setting a label.

2. Unit conversion

The recipe asks for 6 oz; the guide has a price per pound. The tool converts automatically within a measurement category (mass ↔ mass, volume ↔ volume). If the recipe uses a unit that has no compatible line in the guide — a volume when the guide only has a weight — the line can't be costed until you add a compatible price. See getting prices in for how to add one.

3. Yield and waste

You buy 10 lb of whole carrots; after peeling and trimming you have 8 lb of usable carrot. Your yield is 80%, and the true cost of usable carrot is purchase price ÷ 0.80 — 25% higher than the sticker.

There are two clean ways to handle this:

• Cost the guide item at its usable price. If you always break down carrots the same way, enter the yield-adjusted price directly in the cost guide and note it. Simple, but the guide no longer matches the invoice.
• Account for it in the recipe quantity. If a dish needs 8 oz of peeled carrot, enter 10 oz (8 ÷ 0.80) as the ingredient amount. The guide stays true to the invoice; the recipe carries the waste.

Pick one approach per ingredient and be consistent. The mistake is doing neither — costing 8 oz of carrot as if the trim were free.

4. Batch scaling

Recipes are written at whatever batch size the kitchen thinks in — “makes 2 quarts,” “yields 24.” Scaling multiplies every ingredient by the same factor, so a recipe entered as one batch can be costed at half, double, or triple without re-entering anything. The per-batch cost scales linearly; the per-portion cost doesn't change, which is the point — it's the portion cost you put on the menu.

5. Labor

Food cost isn't plate cost. A dish that's 22% food cost but takes fifteen minutes of skilled prep per portion may be less profitable than one at 30% that assembles in ninety seconds.

Add labor as minutes × hourly rate. If a batch takes 40 minutes of a cook paid $22/hr, that's 40 ÷ 60 × $22 = $14.67 of labor spread across the batch's portions. It's an estimate — you're not running a stopwatch — but even a rough labor figure changes which dishes look worth keeping.

What you get out

For each recipe, at a portion level:

• Food cost — ingredients only, from the guide.
• Labor cost — from minutes and rate.
• Total cost and profit — against your sell price.
• Food cost %, labor %, and profit margin, each color-coded to thresholds you set. See reading your food cost %.

Because every recipe reads live from the cost guide, updating one price re-costs every dish that uses that ingredient — which is the whole reason to keep the guide and the recipes in the same place. Build both in the free tools, no account needed.