What is a good food cost percentage?
In a restaurant, food cost percentage is the number the whole business turns on. A few points too high across the menu and profit vanishes — a few points of improvement and it reappears.
Skip the math — the free food cost percentage calculator runs this from your own figures.
Open the free calculator →The formula
Food cost percentage is the cost of a dish's ingredients divided by its menu price. A burger costing $4.50 to make and selling for $16 has a food cost of 4.50 ÷ 16 ≈ 28%.
Calculated per dish, it tells you which items are profitable and which quietly aren't. Calculated across the menu (total food cost divided by total food sales), it tells you the health of the kitchen overall.
Target ranges by concept
Many full-service restaurants aim for a food cost around 28% to 35%, but it varies by concept: fine dining can run higher on premium ingredients, quick-service often lower, and bars lower still on drinks. There's no single right number — the target depends on your model and your other costs.
What matters is that food cost, plus labor and overhead, still leaves a profit. Food cost is the biggest controllable lever for most kitchens.
Why it creeps up
Food cost drifts higher through rising supplier prices, portion sizes creeping up, waste and spoilage, over-ordering, and theft. Because it moves gradually, it's easy to miss until the month's numbers disappoint.
Menu prices that were set long ago against lower ingredient costs are another common culprit — costs rise but prices don't keep pace.
How to bring it down
Lower it by controlling portions, reducing waste, negotiating with suppliers, adjusting recipes, and re-pricing where the market allows. 'Menu engineering' — steering customers toward high-margin dishes — helps the blended number without cutting quality.
The most reliable first step is simply to cost every dish, because you can't manage a food cost percentage you haven't measured item by item.
Price from your target
Once you know a dish's ingredient cost and your target food-cost percentage, the price falls out: divide the cost by the target percentage. A $4.50 dish at a 30% target should be priced at $4.50 ÷ 0.30 = $15.
The free calculator below shows each dish's food-cost percentage and the price it needs to hit your target, so you set a menu that actually makes money.
Questions
Does food cost percentage include labor?
No — food cost percentage covers only the ingredient cost of the food, not the labor to prepare it. Labor is tracked separately as its own percentage of sales. Some operators watch a combined 'prime cost' (food plus labor) as a share of sales, because together those two are the biggest controllable costs. Keep them separate to diagnose, and watch the combined figure to judge overall efficiency.
How often should I recalculate food cost?
Recost dishes whenever supplier prices change meaningfully, and review the menu's overall food cost at least monthly against your sales. Ingredient prices move, so a menu priced a year ago may now run a higher food cost than you think. Regular recosting — and adjusting portions, recipes, or prices in response — is what keeps the percentage in your target range rather than drifting out of it.