The cost price of a dish is the sum of all ingredients in the recipe, converted to the unit you purchase in. The maths isn't hard, keeping it up to date is: supplier prices change every week, and as soon as they do, every cost price in your folder is out of date. KitchenOps reads your invoices automatically and recalculates every dish that contains that ingredient.
Why a spreadsheet cost price is always out of date
In hospitality, a large share of every euro in turnover goes to purchasing, while only a few cents of net profit remain at the bottom line. At those margins, a cost price that's six months old isn't administrative sloppiness, it's a direct loss: an ingredient that has gone up 20 per cent and appears in ten dishes can eat your entire profit without anyone noticing. Updating it manually takes time for every dish, so in practice it simply doesn't happen.
How the calculation works
For each recipe line, the quantity is converted to the ingredient's base unit, for example from a 6-kilo box to a price per gram. That price comes from the most recently processed invoice or price agreement with the supplier you buy that product from. Prepped components count as sub-recipes in their own right, including their yield after cooking, so a sauce that reduces isn't calculated using its pre-reduction weight. What KitchenOps never does is estimate a price: if a price is missing, the system flags it as a gap instead of filling it in with an average.
From cost price to selling price
Once the cost price is accurate, you see the margin in euros and the food cost percentage for each dish, along with the recommended selling price based on the target percentage you've set. If the dish also sells through your till, actual sales data is added, so you see not just what a dish earns per plate, but also what it has contributed over the whole month.
Price increases you wouldn't otherwise notice
Every processed invoice is compared to the previous price of the same item. If something becomes more expensive, you get an alert along with the dishes that consequently fall below your target margin. That way you don't have to go digging, and you know what needs attention that same week, rather than at the end of the month.
Updated: 2026-08-09
