Recipe Costing for the Hospitality Industry
The cost of a dish is the sum of every ingredient in the recipe, converted to the unit you buy it in. The calculation itself isn't hard, keeping it current is: purchase prices change weekly, and the moment they do, every cost calculation in your binder is out of date. KitchenOps reads your invoices automatically and recalculates every dish that contains that ingredient.
Why a spreadsheet food cost is always out of date
In an average foodservice business, 28 to 32 cents of every euro in sales goes to purchasing, while roughly 3 cents of profit remains at the bottom line. At those margins, a food cost calculation that's six months old isn't sloppy admin, it's a direct loss: an ingredient that got 20 percent more expensive and appears in ten dishes will eat your entire result without anyone noticing. Updating it by hand takes about half an hour per dish, so in practice it simply doesn't happen.
How the calculation works
For every 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. Prepared items count as their own sub-recipe, including yield after cooking, so a sauce that reduces isn't calculated at the pre-reduction weight. What KitchenOps never does is estimate a price: if a purchase price is missing, the system flags it as a gap instead of filling it in with an average.
From food cost to selling price
Once the cost calculation is accurate, you see the margin in euros and the food cost percentage per dish, along with the recommended selling price at the target percentage you've set. If the dish is also sold through the POS, actual sales data is added, so you see not just what a dish earns per plate, but also what it contributed over the whole month.
Price increases you wouldn't otherwise catch
Every processed invoice is compared to the previous price of the same item. When something gets more expensive, you get an alert listing the dishes that fall below your target margin as a result. That way you don't have to go looking, and you know what needs to happen that same week, instead of at month-end closing.
Questions? Email hello@horecagpt.com or call +31 24 360 59 14.
Start for free See how it worksFrequently asked questions
How do you calculate the cost of a dish?
Add up the cost of every ingredient in the recipe, converting each quantity to the unit you purchase it in. A recipe using 180 grams from a 6-kilo box that costs 54 euro is calculated at 9 euro per kilo, so 1,62 euro for that line. In KitchenOps, this conversion happens automatically, including for packaging and piece weights.
What's a good food cost percentage?
In most restaurants, food cost falls between 25 and 35 percent of the selling price excluding VAT, depending on the type of establishment and the dish. More important than the average is which dishes are far off target, and you'll only find those once your cost calculations are current.
Do I have to re-enter all my recipes?
No. We take over existing recipes from PDF, Word, or even a photo of a recipe binder. A full menu is usually entered in an afternoon, with cost calculations immediately linked to your current purchase prices.
Does this work without an integration with my supplier?
Yes. You can email or photograph invoices from any supplier, after which they're read line by line and linked to your ingredients. For Bidfood, it runs fully automatically via the daily price list.
Updated: 2026-08-08