Why use this calculator
Most people have a rough feeling that cooking is cheaper than buying, but the feeling collapses the moment anyone asks by how much. The answer depends on batch size far more than on the recipe: the same shopping list spread over eight serves instead of four halves the cost per plate without changing a single ingredient.
Putting a number on it turns vague guilt about delivery apps into an actual comparison, and it exposes the meals where cooking genuinely is not worth it, usually the ones with a long ingredient list eaten by one person. If you sell food, whether that is a market stall, a meal prep side hustle or a catering job, the same arithmetic sets your price, because a plate is only viable when ingredients sit at a sensible share of what you charge.
How to use it
- Add up what the ingredients cost for the whole batch, counting the portion you actually used rather than the price of the full packet, so half a bunch of coriander is half its price.
- Enter how many real servings the batch produces, including leftovers you will genuinely eat rather than the recipe's optimistic claim.
- Put in the hands-on minutes, counting only the time you are actively working rather than unattended oven time.
- Set an hourly value for your time if you are pricing work, or leave it at zero for a pure cash comparison.
- Add energy and consumables for the batch, where roughly forty cents covers an hour of a domestic oven.
- Enter what the same dish costs as takeaway, including delivery and service fees.
- Finally, set a target food cost percentage if you want a suggested selling price.
What each result means
- Ingredient cost per serve
- What the raw ingredients cost for one plate, which is the figure grocery budgets are built from.
- Energy and overhead per serve
- Oven and cooktop energy plus foil, paper and containers, divided across the serves in the batch.
- Value of your time per serve
- Your hourly rate applied to the hands-on minutes and shared across the batch. Zero if you chose not to price your time.
- Cash cost per serve
- Money that genuinely leaves your account per plate, which is ingredients plus energy and nothing else.
- Full cost per serve
- Cash cost plus the value you placed on your own labour, which is the fair comparison against a restaurant price.
- Takeaway price per serve
- What you told us the same dish costs to buy, including delivery and service fees spread across the serves.
- Saving per serve versus takeaway
- How much better or worse off you are per plate. A negative figure means buying it wins once your time counts.
- Over a year at once a week
- The saving across the whole batch multiplied by the 52 weeks in a year, which shows what making this dish weekly instead of buying it adds up to.
- Saving across the whole batch
- The per serve difference multiplied by the number of serves, which is the real weekly effect of a batch habit.
- Total cash cost of the batch
- Ingredients plus energy for the whole cook, useful when splitting the bill with housemates or family.
- Menu price at your target food cost
- What to charge so ingredients land at your chosen share of the price, leaving room for labour and overheads.
The formula
Cost per serve = batch ingredient cost divided by servings
Energy per serve = batch energy cost divided by servings
Labour per serve = prep minutes divided by 60, multiplied by your hourly rate, divided by servings
Cash cost per serve = ingredients plus energy per serve, and full cost per serve adds labour on top
Saving per serve = takeaway price per serve minus full cost per serve, and the batch saving is that multiplied by servings
A suggested menu price comes from the hospitality convention price = ingredient cost per serve divided by the target food cost percentage expressed as a decimal, so a 30 per cent target divides by 0.30
How this number is used in practice
Batch size is the lever that actually moves cost per serve. A curry built from a $25 shopping list feeds four at $6.25 a plate, but doubling the protein and rice for another $15 feeds eight at $5 a plate, because the spices, aromatics and energy were already paid for.
That is why meal prep works financially even when the shopping bill looks larger: the fixed portion of the cost is spread thinner. The same logic runs backwards on small cooks, and a single serve of something with a long ingredient list is frequently more expensive than buying it, once the unused half of every packet is counted honestly.
The hospitality side of this calculation works differently from the household side. Venues price against a target food cost, typically 25 to 35 per cent of the menu price, because the other 65 to 75 per cent has to cover wages, rent, power, insurance, breakages and whatever margin is left.
That is where the familiar rule of thumb about restaurant prices being around three times the ingredient cost comes from, and it explains why a plate of pasta with three dollars of ingredients sells for twenty two without anyone profiteering. If you are pricing a catering job or a market stall, work from the food cost target rather than from what feels reasonable, and remember to count your own hours as a real cost rather than free labour.
Worked examples
Family dinner: $25 of ingredients feeding four, 30 minutes of work, time not priced
$6.25 a serve in ingredients, $6.35 in cash once energy is counted, and $15.65 a serve cheaper than a $22 takeaway.
A bigger batch, $40 of ingredients feeding six, with your time priced at $35 an hour
Ingredients stay at $6.67 a serve but the full cost climbs to $11.14, still ahead of a $26 restaurant plate.
Sunday meal prep: $60 of ingredients making twenty lunches
$3.00 a serve in ingredients and $3.08 in cash, saving $298.50 across the batch against $18 bought lunches.
Catering forty covers with your labour at $45 an hour and a 28% food cost target
$4.50 a serve in ingredients, $10.43 fully costed, and a suggested menu price of $16.07.
When people use it
- Deciding whether tonight is a cook night or a delivery night on the numbers rather than the mood
- Proving to yourself whether Sunday meal prep is actually saving money
- Pricing a catering job or market stall plate from a target food cost percentage
- Splitting a shared household grocery bill fairly by serves eaten rather than by headcount
- Comparing two recipes for the same occasion on cost per plate instead of total shopping bill
Tips
- Price the portion used, not the packet bought. Half a bunch of herbs is half its price, and the other half only counts if it gets thrown away.
- Double the batch before you look for cheaper ingredients. Spreading the fixed costs over more serves beats substituting brands.
- Count delivery and service fees in the takeaway price, because they are often a third of the total on a small order.
- Leave your hourly rate at zero for household decisions. Charging yourself for cooking you enjoy makes every home meal look bad.
- Add the value of leftovers you will genuinely eat to the serving count, and leave out the ones that will die in the fridge.
- If you are selling, work back from a 25 to 35 per cent food cost. Pricing from what feels fair is how food businesses quietly lose money.
What it assumes, and where it stops being accurate
- Ingredient costs are entered by you and are not indexed to any national price series, so they age as grocery prices move.
- Only hands-on minutes count as labour. Unattended oven or slow cooker time is excluded, which understates the total elapsed time.
- Energy cost is a single figure you supply rather than a modelled tariff, and it ignores standing charges and appliance efficiency.
- Waste, spoilage and food you cook but do not eat are not deducted, so real cost per eaten serve is usually a little higher.
- The suggested menu price covers ingredients at your chosen percentage only. It does not verify that the remainder actually covers your wages, rent and tax.
Terms used on this page
- Cost per serve
- Total cost of a batch divided by the number of portions it genuinely produces.
- Food cost percentage
- Ingredient cost expressed as a share of the selling price, the core pricing ratio in hospitality.
- Yield
- How many usable portions a recipe actually produces after trimming, cooking loss and honest portion sizes.
- Overhead
- Costs that are not ingredients or direct labour, such as energy, packaging, rent and insurance.
- Batch cooking
- Cooking a larger quantity at once so fixed costs and effort are spread across more servings.
Questions people ask
- How do I work out cost per serving?
- Divide the total cost of the ingredients used by the number of servings the batch really produces. The two traps are pricing whole packets instead of the portion used, and trusting a recipe that claims six servings when it honestly feeds four. Add energy and packaging if you want the full cash figure per plate.
- Should I count my own time as a cost?
- It depends what the answer is for. For a household budget decision, leave it at zero, because you were not going to be paid for that hour anyway and you may enjoy the cooking. For a catering quote, a market stall or any comparison where you would genuinely have worked instead, price it at your real rate or you will underquote every job.
- Why is takeaway roughly three times the ingredient cost?
- Because venues price to a food cost target of about 25 to 35 per cent of the menu price. The remaining two thirds covers wages, rent, power, insurance, breakage, waste and any profit. It is not a markup on cooking, it is the cost of a building full of paid staff, which is exactly the part you are replacing at home.
- What food cost percentage should I target?
- Most hospitality operations work between 25 and 35 per cent, with high labour dishes sitting lower and simple high volume plates sitting higher. Under 25 per cent usually means you are either buying very well or charging a premium the market has to support. Over 40 per cent leaves too little for wages and overheads to survive a quiet week.
- Does energy cost really matter?
- Rarely enough to change a decision. An hour of a domestic electric oven typically costs somewhere around 30 to 60 cents depending on your tariff, so it is cents per serve on any reasonable batch. It becomes worth counting when you are pricing commercially, running a long braise, or cooking single portions where nothing is shared.
- How do I compare two recipes fairly?
- Compare cost per serve, not total shopping bill, and use the same serving size for both. A recipe with a bigger bill can easily be cheaper per plate if it yields more. Also run both with the same labour rate, since a thirty minute stir fry and a three hour braise look very different once your time is priced.
Use this with
Meal Cost Calculator answers one part of the question. These pick up where it stops: Unit Price Comparison Calculator, Budget Planner Calculator, Recipe Scaler and Discount Calculator.
Where these figures come from
This calculation is jurisdiction-neutral arithmetic. No country-specific rules are applied.
- USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion food plans. Published cost-of-food benchmarks per person per week
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Surveys. Household spending split between food at home and food away from home
- Australian Bureau of Statistics Consumer Price Index. Grocery and takeaway price movements
Meal Cost Calculator produces an estimate for general information. It is not financial, tax, medical, legal or engineering advice. read the full disclaimer. Spotted a wrong number? Report it and it gets fixed. The form picks up this calculator and the inputs you used.