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Food cost is the share of the menu price that goes to ingredients. At 30%, a dish that costs you $4.90 to plate should sell for about $16.95 — for every dollar a guest pays, roughly 30¢ covers the food and the rest covers labor, rent and (hopefully) profit.
The calculator rounds up to a "charm price" ($X.95) because guests read $14.95 as meaningfully cheaper than $15 — while your food cost percentage barely moves.
| Food cost % | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Under 28% | Healthy — room to invest in quality or portion size |
| 28–35% | Typical for full-service restaurants |
| 35–40% | Tight — reprice your top sellers before cutting quality |
| Over 40% | Danger — reprice now or the dish loses money at scale |
Keep going with these tools — they build on this calculation: Food Cost Percentage Calculator, Menu Engineering Matrix, Break Even Calculator and Prime Cost Calculator. When your prices look right, print the menu with the Menu Maker — free templates, PDF & PNG. Want us to set the whole system up for you? Ask about concierge setup.
Most full-service restaurants run 28–35%. Quick-service spots usually sit lower, around 25–30%. What matters more is the trend: a menu creeping from 31% to 36% is a price rise or a supplier problem waiting to be found.
Charm pricing ($14.95) is the safe default for casual dining. Whole-dollar pricing reads as premium and speeds up payment — some upscale rooms use it deliberately. Test one menu section at a time.
No — this prices by plate cost only. To see whether the price actually pays the bills, run the Break-Even Calculator with your monthly fixed costs.