What is Food Cost Percentage?
Food cost percentage is the share of your food sales spent on the ingredients used to make that food: food cost ÷ food sales.
It's the kitchen's version of Pour Cost. You can measure it for a single dish or for your whole kitchen over a week or month.
The Formula
For a single dish:
Plate Cost ÷ Menu Price = Food Cost %
For a period:
Food COGS ÷ Food Sales = Food Cost %
where Food COGS = Beginning Food Inventory + Food Purchases − Ending Food Inventory. See COGS.
Quick Example
One dish: a burger sells for $16 and costs $4.80 in ingredients.
$4.80 ÷ $16 = 30% food cost
One month:
Beginning food inventory: $6,000
Food purchases: $4,500
Ending food inventory: $5,500
Food COGS: 6,000 + 4,500 − 5,500 = $5,000
Food sales: $16,000
$5,000 ÷ $16,000 = 31.25% food cost
The dish-level number is what the menu is designed to run. The period number is what the kitchen actually ran. When the second is higher than the first, the difference is waste, portioning, comps, or bad counts.
Why It Matters
Food is usually one of a restaurant's two biggest costs, alongside labor. Together they make up Prime Cost.
It shows whether menu prices are keeping up with ingredient prices.
Tracked weekly, it catches waste and portioning problems before they add up.
What Good Looks Like
A Johnson & Wales foodservice finance textbook puts typical food cost at roughly 28–35%, depending on concept (source). Steakhouses and seafood concepts often run higher; pizza and pasta concepts often run lower.
As with pour cost, the target matters less than consistency. A dish above your target can still earn its place if it brings in strong Contribution Margin dollars.
Common Mistakes
Using purchases instead of usage A big order at the end of the month makes food cost spike on paper even if nothing changed in the kitchen. Count inventory and use COGS.
Mixing food and beverage Food and drinks run at very different cost percentages. Track them separately or neither number means much.
Forgetting transfers Limes from the kitchen used at the bar, or wine pulled for a sauce, shift cost between departments. Log transfers so each side carries its own cost.
Leaving out staff meals and comps They're real food costs. Track them, but keep them separate so they don't hide portioning problems.
Old plate costs If plate costs come from last year's invoices, your dish-level food cost is wrong. See Recipe Costing.
Food Cost % vs Pour Cost
Same idea, different side of the house:
Food cost % = food ingredient cost ÷ food sales
Pour cost = beverage ingredient cost ÷ beverage sales
Beverage programs usually run a lower percentage than kitchens. That's one reason a strong bar helps a restaurant's overall numbers.
FAQ
What's a good food cost percentage? Roughly 28–35% is a common range for full-service restaurants. Your concept, prices, and menu mix decide where you should land within it.
Does food cost include labor? No. Food cost is ingredients only. Labor is tracked separately and added to food and beverage costs to get prime cost.
How often should I calculate it? Weekly if you can count that often, monthly at minimum. Weekly makes it far easier to connect a jump to its cause.
How do I lower my food cost percentage? Check portions first, then waste, then prices. Reworking a dish's build or price only helps if the kitchen is already making it to spec.
Do This in Spec
Spec costs every dish down to its sub-recipes, from sauces to pickles, and updates ingredient prices from your invoices, so your plate costs stay current without rebuilding a spreadsheet.
Related Terms
Related Guides from Spec
Bottom Line
Food cost percentage tells you how much of every food dollar goes back into ingredients. Know what each dish should run, measure what the kitchen actually runs, and treat the gap as the problem to solve.
