Most costing sheets are wrong in the same quiet way: they cost what the recipe says, not what the kitchen uses. The gap between those two is the whole difference between a costing you can price from and a number that just looks reassuring.
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A costing sheet has one job: turn what you bought into what one of the things you sell costs to make. Every column below exists to survive that conversion. Anything else is decoration.
The invoice is for a 5kg bag. The recipe uses 180g. Almost every costing error in existence lives in that sentence — either the conversion is skipped, or it is done once and never redone when the pack size changes.
Do it in two steps, always in the same order, and keep both steps visible on the sheet. A single combined number is impossible to check a month later.
| Step | Sum | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Unit cost | Pack price ÷ pack size | $42.00 ÷ 5000g = $0.0084 per gram |
| Line cost | Unit cost × quantity used | $0.0084 × 180g = $1.51 |
| With yield | Line cost ÷ yield | $1.51 ÷ 0.85 = $1.78, if 15% is lost to trim |
You buy a whole fish and serve fillets. You buy potatoes with dirt on them. You buy a 5kg bag and the last scrape of it never leaves the bag. The kitchen pays for the whole pack; the plate only carries part of it.
A costing without a yield column silently assumes nothing is ever lost, which is never true and is most untrue on exactly the expensive items where it matters. If you only add one column to a template you already have, add this one.
Two different percentages get called the same thing, and quoting one while thinking of the other is how a menu ends up priced wrong across the board.
| Number | Sum | On a $4 cost sold at $16 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost percentage | Cost ÷ sell price | 25% — the one hospitality usually means |
| Gross margin | (Sell − cost) ÷ sell price | 75% — the same fact, said the other way |
| Markup | (Sell − cost) ÷ cost | 300% — a different number entirely |
A costing is not a document, it is a calculation you will run again. Suppliers move prices, pack sizes shrink, and a costing done once is out of date the first time either happens.
So keep the pack price in its own cell rather than baked into a line cost. When the invoice changes you want to edit one number and watch the sheet answer — not rebuild the recipe. The same discipline is what lets you re-cost a whole menu in an evening instead of over a weekend.
Cost Builder is this sheet, with the arithmetic already done. Put in each ingredient or part with what the pack costs and how much is in it, say how much you use, and the per-unit cost falls out — 180g of a 5kg bag stays 180g of a 5kg bag. Set your sell price and the margin sits beside it in dollars and per cent. You get a spreadsheet view and a clean PDF report of the same costing, and you can reopen it when a supplier puts prices up rather than starting again. Free on every plan.