Price & food cost calculator

How it works

1. 1 Say what you sell and how you like to price: a cost %, a markup or a margin, and how your prices end.
2. 2 List what you buy at the price of a pack, the way it's on the invoice: a 10 kg bag, a case of 50, a litre. Paste a list to add many at once.
3. 3 Build each thing you sell from what goes into it. Each line shows what it costs, and a bar shows where every dollar of the price goes.
4. 4 When a supplier's price goes up, choose “The price changed” or paste the new invoice. Out come new prices that keep your margin, a note for customers, cost cards and prices for delivery apps.

Free, with no account. Your prices, recipes and sales stay on this page: nothing is sent to us, and they're kept on this device only while Remember is on.

Good to know

Cost %, markup or margin?

The same target, said three ways. If what goes into a $10 item costs $3, that's a 30% cost, a 3.33× markup and a 70% margin. Margin here is what's left after the cost of the item itself, before rent, wages and everything else; it isn't profit. There's no right target for everyone. It depends on your rent, your hours and what you sell, so start from what your prices already earn and adjust from there.

Which way should prices go up?

Keep the same cents raises each price by what that item now costs you more, plus the card fee on the difference, so every sale leaves the dollars it did. It's the smallest rise. Keep the same cost % raises prices in step with costs, so your percentage holds; the rises are bigger. Reach my target brings every item that's under your target up to it. Prices only go up here, and you can untick any you'd rather hold.

Why does it round up?

Rounding down to a tidy price can give back the margin you just worked out, so suggested prices always round up to your next ending. The ladder under each item shows the prices either side, with what the cost takes of each, if you'd rather pick a rounder one.

What's the usable share?

The part of a pack you can sell. Trim from a case of lettuce, bones in a chicken, stems you cut from a bunch: you paid for them too. At 80% usable, the pack price is spread over the 80%, so each gram you use costs a quarter more. Weigh it yourself, before and after trimming, a few times.

My recipe says cups, but flour comes by the kilo

Weigh one cup once and type it in. Every recipe that uses that flour converts from then on. The calculator doesn't guess how much a cup weighs, because it depends on the flour and how it's packed.

Where does sales tax fit?

Tax isn't yours, so it never counts toward cost or margin. Prices here are before tax, unless you tick that yours already include it; then the tax comes out of the price first. Whether food is taxed depends on what it is and how it's sold: many basic groceries are zero-rated, while restaurant meals, snacks and single servings usually aren't (verify). Untick sales tax on any item that's zero-rated. The CRA's basic groceries memo has the details, and its rates calculator gives the rate for each province.

How does the menu map sort things?

By two questions: does it sell, and does each sale pay? It's the classic menu engineering method. An item counts as popular when it sells at least 70% of an even share of the week's sales, and as paying when each sale leaves at least your menu's average, in dollars rather than percent. Stars do both, workhorses sell but leave less, puzzles pay but seldom sell, and the rest are worth a rethink. Your weekly sales are guesses, and that's fine: the map is for spotting patterns.

What about delivery apps?

Each app price is set so that, after the commission comes off the price before tax, a sale leaves what it does in the shop. Commissions differ by app, plan and who delivers, and some contracts limit how far app prices may differ from yours (verify), so check yours. This is guidance for setting prices, not financial or tax advice.