Recipe Cost Calculator
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What this tool does
True cost per serving with usable yield included — purchase price alone understates a plate by 10–20%.
Other tools for this stage
- Ops CopilotDescribe what's going wrong in the unit; get causes, this week's actions, and metrics.
- Multi-Unit BenchmarkPut your units side by side — find the drag, and what closing the gap is worth.
- FDD Builder AIFor franchisors: your disclosure outline, the data to gather, and the earnings-claim call.
- Break-Even CalculatorThe revenue — and customer count — a unit needs each month before it makes a cent.
- Working Capital & RunwayModel the ramp-up: the working capital a unit burns before break-even, and whether your reserve survives it.
- Occupancy Cost RatioCheck rent + occupancy as a share of revenue against healthy benchmarks, and your max sustainable rent.
What this calculates
The real cost of one serving, with usable yield included. Purchase price alone understates a plate because trim, peel, bone, evaporation and portioning error all mean you buy more than you serve. This applies the yield percentage to each ingredient and returns a cost per serving you can price against with confidence.
What you will need
Purchase price and pack size. As invoiced, so the unit cost is calculated on what you actually pay rather than on a list price.
Usable yield per ingredient. The share that reaches the plate after preparation. This is where the understatement comes from, and it is worth measuring rather than estimating for your highest-volume items.
Portion size. The portion actually served, not the one on the spec sheet. If your kitchen consistently plates over spec, cost the reality — that is what you are paying for.
How to read the result
Compare the yielded cost against your menu price to get the true margin, then check it against what the Menu Margin Matrix assumed. Items costed at purchase price routinely appear ten to twenty per cent cheaper than they are, which is enough to move an item between quadrants and to make you promote the wrong thing. Re-cost after any significant supplier price change, particularly on your highest-volume items where a small error repeats thousands of times.
Questions about this tool
How do I find a real yield percentage?
Weigh it. Take the raw purchased weight and the usable weight after preparation for a few batches and average them. For your top-selling items this is worth an afternoon.
Should waste be in the recipe cost or elsewhere?
Preparation loss belongs in yield. Spoilage and over-production are a separate problem — the Waste and Prep Planner is built to price those.
How often should recipes be re-costed?
After meaningful supplier price movement, and at least seasonally for items with volatile inputs. Margins erode quietly when costs move and prices do not.
For reference only; not legal, tax, or investment advice. Results depend entirely on the figures you enter — check them against your own quotes and your franchise agreement before acting on them.