You run a restaurant or a cafe and you want to know: what does a dish really cost you? What should you charge so the ingredients stay within the percentage you set? Which dishes make money and which eat your margin? And what happens to all of it when the price of cheese or chicken goes up? The free recipe costing sheet answers these from two things you type: ingredient prices and dish recipes. The template and its page are in Arabic.
The problem it solves
Many kitchens price by feel: "chicken went up, so raise the rice." A dish is really the sum of small amounts: 150 grams of rice, 20 ml of oil, an onion. And the moment one ingredient changes price, every dish using it changes cost, yet nobody recalculates twenty recipes by hand. The result is a dish sold at an old price with a new cost, and profit quietly shrinks. The sheet redoes this whenever a price changes.
How it works, step by step
- In Settings, write the target cost percentage, such as 30%.
- In Ingredients, write each ingredient, its unit and the price of one unit (per kg, litre or piece).
- In Dishes, write each dish and its actual selling price.
- In Recipes, add one row per ingredient in a dish, with the quantity in the ingredient's own unit (0.150 kg for 150 grams).
- Read cost, suggested price, margin and cost percentage in Dishes, and the ranking and price-rise effect in the Summary.
What each sheet does
- Settings: the target cost percentage, plus an ingredient and a rise percentage for a "what if it goes up?" test.
- Ingredients: prices in one place, so changing one updates every dish. It also shows how many dishes use each ingredient.
- Dishes: cost, suggested price (cost divided by the target, rounded up to the next pound), margin and actual cost percentage. A dish above target is coloured and marked "above target".
- Recipes: each dish's ingredients and quantities, with the cost of every line.
- Summary: the top three and bottom three dishes by margin, the average cost percentage, and the effect of the price rise on every dish.
A walkthrough with the sample data
These are sample dishes and prices built into the template, not a real restaurant. The target is 30%.
- Grilled chicken with rice: cost 45.90 (0.35 kg chicken, rice, oil, onion). Suggested price 153, but it sells at 140, so its cost is 32.8%, "above target", with a margin of 94.10.
- Beef burger: cost 74.60, price 180, so 41.4%, the highest cost percentage; suggested price 249.
- Margherita pizza: cost 42.95, price 150, so 28.6%, "within target", margin 107.05, the best of the sample.
- Cappuccino: cost 17.15, price 55, so 31.2%, narrowly above target.
- French fries: cost 9.00, price 35 (25.7%), but a margin of only 26.00, the lowest in the sample.
- Rice with meat has no selling price ("no price", suggested 278) and green salad has no recipe ("no recipe"); neither is ranked.
Now the price-rise test: mozzarella goes from 220 to 275 per kg (+25%). Three dishes cost more: pizza by 8.25 (to 51.20, 34.1%), burger by 1.65 and pasta by 1.10. Pizza moves from within target to above it, so dishes above target go from three to four. This is a test in Settings and does not change real prices.
What you get
- Pricing from numbers: a suggested price per dish instead of guessing.
- One update: change an ingredient price once and every recipe follows.
- Works in Excel 2016+, Google Sheets and LibreOffice; free; 300 ingredients, 200 dishes, 1,000 recipe lines.
Using the online version
The template page opens on this worked example. Type in the white cells and the grey ones update at once; add ingredients and recipes through an entry form. Import your own .xlsx made from this template, export to .xlsx, or download the original file. Your data stays in your browser and is not sent to the server. Open the template page or the template list.
Who it suits, and its limits
It suits a restaurant, cafe or cloud kitchen that wants recipe-based pricing. Keep quantities in the ingredient's own unit (kg, not grams), and remember it counts ingredients only, not rent, salaries or waste, so allow for them when choosing your target. If you manage stock across branches with several people editing prices, a custom program can be built around how you work. For general costs see the expenses and budget template. To weigh ready-made options, read how to compare business software.
FAQ
How is the suggested price calculated? Dish cost divided by the target cost percentage, rounded up to the next pound.
What does "above target" mean? Cost divided by actual selling price is higher than your target.