plate-cost

---
name: plate-cost
description: Works out what one dish actually costs you to put on a plate, to the penny, from your own invoices and your own weighed yields, and produces a dated dish cost card with the gross profit attached. Use when you are pricing a menu, arguing with a food cost figure, or cannot say what a dish makes you.
---

# Know what every dish on your menu really costs you, to the penny

You give this the recipe, a phone photo of the supplier invoices that the ingredients came off, and a set of kitchen scales. You get back a dated cost card for that dish: every ingredient at a price you can point at on an invoice, every trim and cooking loss measured rather than guessed, the finished plate cost in pounds and pence, and the gross profit the dish makes at the price you currently charge. It never puts a number on the card that you cannot trace back to a piece of paper or a weighing.

## What it does

1. **Pick one dish and gather four things before touching a calculator.** The four are: the recipe as the kitchen actually cooks it, not the one written when the menu opened; every purchase invoice covering the ingredients in it, with a stated date range such as the last ninety days; a set of digital scales that reads to one gram; and one real plate of the dish, made during service by whoever normally makes it. Write the dish name, the date, and the invoice date range at the top of the card. A cost card without a date is worthless within a month, because the price of chicken moves and the card does not. If any ingredient has no invoice behind it, list it now in a short block headed "no invoice held" and keep it there until one turns up. Do not fill the hole with a price from a supplier's website or a trade magazine.

2. **Take VAT out of every purchase price, and keep the selling price gross.** Cost each ingredient at what it truly costs the business, which for a VAT-registered operator is the invoice price net of any VAT it can reclaim. The selling price on your menu is the other way round: it is the price the customer pays with VAT already in it, because HMRC's catering guidance lists "supplies made in restaurants, cafés, canteens and similar establishments" among the standard-rated supplies. Two different bases, and mixing them is the single commonest way a gross profit figure comes out flattering and wrong. Label every column on the card as net or gross so nobody has to guess. Then hand the VAT treatment of your particular purchases to your accountant, because zero-rated food, standard-rated drink and the reclaim position are not the same for every business.

3. **Convert every invoice line to a price per gram, per millilitre or per single item.** Never cost from a case price. A 6 x 2kg case at £54.00 is £4.50 per kilogram, so £0.0045 per gram. A 12 x 1L case of oil at £28.80 is £0.0024 per millilitre. Pack sizes shrink between order cycles while the case price holds still, so a card built on case prices hides a price rise completely. Show both figures on the card, the pack as printed on the invoice and the price per base unit, so the conversion can be checked by anyone. Where an invoice line shows no quantity or no unit price, record that line as its own finding: a full VAT invoice is required to carry the quantity and the unit price, and a line missing them is a line you cannot cost.

4. **Weigh the yield on every ingredient that gets trimmed, peeled, boned or drained.** This is the step that separates a real cost card from a hopeful one. Record the weight as it arrives, prepare it exactly as your kitchen does, weigh the waste, and apply the formulas from the open textbook *Basic Kitchen and Food Service Management*: "AP weight - waste = EP weight" and "EP weight ÷ AP weight × 100 = yield %". Its worked example is a whole sockeye salmon of 7.75kg losing 2.75kg of head, bones and skin: "(5000 ÷ 7750) × 100 = 64.51% for the salmon". Then convert yield into money with "100 ÷ yield % = factor" and "factor × as purchased cost per (unit) = edible product cost per (unit)". Salmon bought at £5.00 a kilogram with a 64.51% yield costs £7.75 a kilogram on the plate. Weigh it yourself. A yield taken from a book goes on the card labelled "book yield, not tested here".

5. **Run a cooking loss test on anything roasted, braised or baked off.** Trimming loss and cooking loss are two different losses and a roast suffers both. The same textbook's leg of lamb worked example starts at 3750g, trims to 2850g, cooks down to 2350g, and after boning leaves a saleable weight of 1600g, which is "43.00%" of what was bought. At £6.50 a kilogram bought in, the usable meat costs £15.24 a kilogram and a 125g portion costs £1.91. Note the oven temperature and the cooking time on the test, as the form does, because a different temperature gives a different loss and the card would then be describing a dish you are not cooking. Do this once per roasting joint and reuse the figure until the joint, the supplier or the method changes.

6. **Weigh the plate as it actually leaves the pass, three times.** Have the same dish made on three separate services by whoever is on, and weigh each component before it goes out: protein, starch, vegetable, sauce, garnish. You are testing the recipe against the kitchen, and the kitchen usually wins. If the recipe says 180g of chicken and the three plates weigh 205g, 190g and 230g, the dish costs what 208g costs, not what 180g costs, and the card says so. Record the three weights on the card rather than the average alone, because the spread is the number that tells the owner whether the dish has a costing problem or a portioning problem. A spread wider than ten per cent on the main protein is a portioning finding and belongs in its own line, not buried in an average.

7. **Add the things every cost card forgets.** Walk the dish from the pass backwards and count what is genuinely on it or with it: the oil or butter in the pan, the seasoning, the flour on the board, the sauce reduction, the garnish, the lemon wedge, the slice of bread it is served with, the sachet of sauce in the takeaway bag, the box and the lid. Weigh or count each one and cost it at the per-unit price from step 3. Then cost the bread and butter, the olives or the bar snack you put on every table free of charge, and show it as its own line called "given away with this dish", not hidden inside the ingredient list. Do not add a blanket percentage for wastage. If you want wastage on the card, measure a week of it and put the measured figure on, or leave it off and say it is not included.

8. **State gross profit twice: in pounds and as a percentage.** Cash gross profit is the selling price less the plate cost, and that is the money the dish contributes towards rent, wages and everything else. Gross profit percentage is that figure divided by the selling price. Show both, because they rank dishes differently and an owner who only watches the percentage will drop the dish that pays the most bills. The textbook's own illustration makes the point with chicken at £4.50 cost and £16.50 price, a 27% food cost with £12.00 of margin, against steak at £9.00 and £24.00, a 38% food cost with £15.00 of margin. Compute the percentage on the VAT-exclusive selling price and say on the card that you have done so.

9. **Write the cost card, date it, and name the paper behind every number.** The card carries: dish name, date costed, invoice date range, then one row per ingredient with supplier product code, description, pack size as printed, price per base unit, invoice number and date, quantity on the plate, yield percentage and where it came from, and the line cost. Under that: total plate cost, current selling price, cash gross profit, gross profit percentage, and the separate blocks for "given away with this dish" and "no invoice held". Finish with one line naming the single ingredient that carries the most cost, because that is where a change of supplier or a change of portion actually moves the number, and the owner should not have to scan the table to find it.

## Then it checks

1. Every ingredient row names an invoice number and an invoice date, and no row carries "approx", "circa", "about" or a rounded guess in the price column.
2. Every ingredient that is trimmed, peeled, boned, drained or roasted shows a yield percentage, and each one is labelled either as weighed on a stated date or as "book yield, not tested here".
3. The individual line costs add up to the stated plate cost exactly, and each line cost reproduces when quantity is multiplied by price per base unit.
4. Every purchase price is shown net of reclaimable VAT and the selling price is shown gross, each column is labelled net or gross, and no figure compares one to the other without saying so.
5. The plate weights from all three services appear on the card with their dates, and any component whose spread across the three exceeds ten per cent is flagged as a portioning finding.
6. Cash gross profit and gross profit percentage both appear, the percentage is calculated on the VAT-exclusive selling price, and the two figures reconcile against the plate cost and the selling price shown.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never substitute a supplier's list price, a website price or last year's price for an invoice you hold. A cost card built on a price nobody paid produces a menu price nobody can defend, and the error compounds across every dish sharing that ingredient.
- Never use a published yield figure where the ingredient can be weighed in your own kitchen. Your butcher's trim, your peeler and your chef are not the ones in the book, and the gap between a book yield and a real one is often the whole of the dish's margin.
- Never put a blanket wastage percentage on a card. An invented five per cent looks prudent and makes every dish uncheckable, because no one can later tell which part of the cost was measured and which was assumed.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's accountant to check before it is used to set prices or to file anything. It reads invoices, weighs food and states arithmetic. It is not advice on VAT treatment, on what you may reclaim, or on how your accounts should be prepared.

## Built from
- BC Cook Articulation Committee, "Basic Kitchen and Food Service Management", BCcampus Open Education, 2015, CC BY 4.0, https://opentextbc.ca/basickitchenandfoodservicemanagement/chapter/yield-testing/ and the Cooking Loss Test, Controlling Food Costs and Principles of Menu Engineering chapters, read 14 September 2026: every formula in steps 4, 5 and 8, the salmon and leg of lamb worked examples, and the chicken against steak comparison that forced gross profit to be reported in pounds as well as per cent.
- HM Revenue & Customs, "Catering, takeaway food (VAT Notice 709/1)", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/catering-takeaway-food-and-vat-notice-7091, last updated 8 June 2026, read 14 September 2026: the standard rating of "supplies made in restaurants, cafés, canteens and similar establishments", which is why step 2 keeps purchase prices net and selling prices gross and labels both.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Unfair commercial practices", CMA207, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/691b9bd821ef5aaa6543ee6f/Unfair_commercial_practices_CMA207_18_Nov_2025__2_.pdf, 18 November 2025, read 14 September 2026: the total price rule that stops a cost card being turned into a headline price with mandatory charges added later.
- Zsuzsanna Ivancsóné Horváth, Csaba Kőmíves, Júlia Nagy-Keglovich and Éva Happ, "Examining a menu on the basis of the Kasavana-Smith model in a Hungarian restaurant", Deturope 14(1): 111-127, 2022, https://www.deturope.eu/pdfs/det/2022/01/06.pdf, read 14 September 2026: the warning that a margin figure "provides a cost and benefit coverage" rather than profit, which is why step 8 never calls gross profit profit.

# plate-cost

## You are given
A folder from a UK hospitality business containing any of: recipe sheets or a typed recipe, supplier invoices (PDF, photo or CSV), a spreadsheet of purchase prices, and a list of menu dishes with their current selling prices. Weighed yield figures and plate weights may be supplied in a text or CSV file. Assume nothing is clean, nothing is consistently named, and some ingredients have no invoice at all.

## Produce
Write into an `output/` folder next to the inputs:

1. `dish-cost-cards.xlsx` with one sheet per dish plus a sheet named `Summary`.
   Each dish sheet has these columns in this order: `Ingredient`, `Supplier`, `Supplier product code`, `Pack size as printed`, `Invoice number`, `Invoice date`, `Pack price net of VAT (GBP)`, `Price per base unit (GBP)`, `Base unit` (g, ml or item), `Quantity on plate`, `Yield %`, `Yield source` (weighed DD Month YYYY, or "book yield, not tested here"), `EP price per base unit (GBP)`, `Line cost (GBP)`.
   Under the table, rows labelled: `Total plate cost (GBP)`, `Selling price incl VAT (GBP)`, `Selling price excl VAT (GBP)`, `Cash gross profit (GBP)`, `Gross profit % (on excl VAT price)`, `Highest cost ingredient`.
   The `Summary` sheet lists every dish with plate cost, selling price, cash gross profit and gross profit %, sorted by cash gross profit, highest first.
2. `dish-cost-cards.csv` - the Summary sheet, flat.
3. `no-invoice-held.csv` with columns: `Dish`, `Ingredient`, `Quantity on plate`, `Reason`.
4. `cost-card-<dish-slug>.md` for each dish, one printable A4 page, ready to pin in the kitchen.
5. `README.md` - what was read, the invoice date range, and what could not be costed.

## Rules
- Every price must come from a supplied invoice or price file. Never fill a gap with a web price, a trade average or an estimate. Put the gap in `no-invoice-held.csv`.
- Convert every pack to a price per gram, per millilitre or per single item before costing. Never cost from a case price.
- EP price per base unit = price per base unit × (100 ÷ yield %). If no yield figure is supplied, set `Yield %` to 100 and `Yield source` to "not supplied, assumed 100%".
- Purchase prices go in net of VAT. Selling prices go in as the customer pays them. Label both. Calculate gross profit % on the VAT-exclusive selling price.
- Round only at the point of display, to two decimal places. Line costs must sum to the plate cost exactly.
- Use British English, £, and DD Month YYYY dates. No em dashes.
- Add no commentary about tax treatment. State figures only.

## Return
A list of the files written with their absolute paths, the number of dishes costed, the number of ingredient lines with no invoice, and any dish that could not be costed at all with the reason.