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Recipe Costing Calculator

Cost your recipes ingredient by ingredient

Currency:
GBP

Recipe Details

portion
£

Recipe Ingredients

£
Line cost£0.00

In Brikly, ingredients auto-populate from your database with live costs. No manual entry needed.

Cost Summary

Add ingredients and set a selling price to see your cost breakdown.

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In Brikly, ingredients auto-populate from your database, costs update in real time from your invoices, and AI extracts recipes from photos and documents. No more manual data entry.

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Why recipe costing matters for cafes and restaurants

Most independent operators run their menus on guesswork. A flat white feels like it costs about a pound to make. A brunch dish feels profitable because it sells well. The problem is “feels” doesn’t pay your suppliers and ingredient prices move every quarter.

Costing every recipe ingredient by ingredient gives you three numbers that change every decision you make: cost per portion, gross profit per portion, and gross margin percentage. Without those numbers you can’t reprice a dish, you can’t justify a portion change, and you can’t spot the dishes that are quietly losing you money.

How to cost a recipe step by step

  1. List every ingredient. Including oil, salt, butter for the pan, and the garnish. The ones you skip are the ones that quietly erode your margin.
  2. Enter the cost and unit you actually buy in. If flour comes in a 16kg sack at £18, that is what you enter. The calculator works out the cost of the 200g you actually use.
  3. Set the recipe yield. How many portions does this batch make? A tray-bake that makes 12 portions has a very different per-portion cost than one that makes 8.
  4. Enter your selling price ex-VAT. If you are VAT-registered, work in ex-VAT prices throughout so your margin is the actual margin you keep.
  5. Read the three numbers. Cost per portion, gross profit, and gross margin. Compare to your target food cost percentage. Adjust portion, ingredients, or price.

Common pitfalls when costing recipes

  • Forgetting the small ingredients. Salt, oil, herbs, and butter add up to 2–5% of total cost across a menu. Skip them and your margin numbers flatter you by exactly that much.
  • Using out-of-date supplier prices. Recosting once a year is not enough in a high-inflation period. UK food inflation has run between 5% and 12% in recent years and your costing should track it.
  • Mixing up gross margin and food cost percentage. Food cost % is ingredient cost divided by selling price. Gross margin is the inverse. A 30% food cost is a 70% gross margin.
  • Costing in inc-VAT prices. If you are VAT-registered the VAT is not your money. Always cost in ex-VAT terms.

What to do once you have your numbers

Costing is the input. The output is decisions. Three things to do with the numbers:

  • Compare every dish against a target margin. Most UK cafes target 65–72% gross margin on food, 75–82% on drinks. Anything well below becomes a candidate for a price rise, a portion change, or removal.
  • Spot the menu engineering quadrant. Cross your margin data with sales volume. Stars (high margin, high volume) deserve the menu’s best real estate. Plowhorses (low margin, high volume) deserve a careful price test.
  • Recost on price changes, not on a calendar. When a key ingredient shifts more than 10%, recost the dishes that use it. Don’t wait for the next quarterly review.

For deeper guides see how to cost every dish on your menu, UK cafe gross profit margin benchmarks, and how to calculate food cost percentage.

Frequently asked questions

How do you calculate recipe cost per portion?

Add up the cost of every ingredient in the recipe, then divide by the number of portions it makes. For example, if your ingredients total £4.80 and the recipe makes 12 portions, your cost per portion is £0.40. Include everything, even salt, oil, and garnishes.

What is a good gross margin for a restaurant?

Most UK restaurants target a food cost percentage of 28–35%, which means a gross margin of 65–72%. Cafes and bakeries often achieve higher margins (70–75%) on drinks and baked goods. The key is knowing your actual margin per dish, not just an average across the menu.

How do you calculate food cost percentage?

Food cost percentage = (cost of ingredients / selling price) x 100. If a dish costs £2.50 to make and sells for £8.50, your food cost is 29.4%. For VAT-registered businesses, use the ex-VAT selling price. This calculator handles the maths automatically.

Should I include VAT when calculating recipe costs?

Your ingredient costs are usually ex-VAT (you reclaim input VAT). For the selling price, use the ex-VAT price if you are VAT registered, or the full price if you are not. This gives you the true gross margin before tax.