Recipe cost card builder
Cost a dish properly. Enter ingredients with the unit you buy in, the recipe qty, and the yield % you actually get after peeling, deshelling, or trimming. The card returns cost per portion, food cost %, contribution margin, and — if you are over your target band — the menu price you would need to hit it. Print the A4 chef-house card for the station. Free, no signup.
Recipe header
Menu price & target
Ingredients
6 rowsMethod of preparation (optional)
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Paneer Butter Masala
| Ingredient | Recipe qty | Unit cost ₹ | Yield % | Eff. cost ₹ | Line ₹ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paneer | 180 g | ₹0.42 | 100% | ₹0.42 | ₹75.6 |
| Tomato | 220 g | ₹0.04 | 95% | ₹0.04 | ₹9.26 |
| Butter | 30 g | ₹0.48 | 100% | ₹0.48 | ₹14.4 |
| Cream | 40 ml | ₹0.43 | 100% | ₹0.43 | ₹17 |
| Cashew | 18 g | ₹0.82 | 100% | ₹0.82 | ₹14.76 |
| Spice mix | 12 g | ₹0.35 | 100% | ₹0.35 | ₹4.2 |
| Total batch cost | ₹135.22 | ||||
| Cost per portion (1 portion/batch) | ₹135.22 | ||||
Why a recipe card beats memory
Most independent kitchens in India run on the head chef's memory. It works until the head chef takes a day off, until your paneer vendor raises rates 8% on Monday, until a new commis joins and the dal makhani comes out 30 grams of cashew heavier than the one priced on your menu. A recipe card is the contract: the dish on the customer's plate matches the dish on which you priced the menu. Without it, food cost % drifts up two or three points per quarter and nobody can tell you why.
The card is also the only thing that lets you negotiate. When the paneer rate goes up ₹30/kg, you can't argue with the vendor unless you can point to exactly how many rupees that adds to a single plate. With a card on the wall, that's a 30-second conversation. Without it, it's a feeling.
What yield % really means
Yield % is the share of the ingredient that actually makes it onto the plate after preparation. You buy paneer at ₹420/kg, but you use 100% of it — yield is 100%. You buy onions at ₹40/kg, but after peeling and trimming the root, you get 85% — yield is 85%. Prawns are worse: a kilo of headless shell-on prawns yields about 60% after deshelling and deveining. The card adjusts the unit cost for yield automatically:
Effective unit cost = purchase price ÷ purchase qty ÷ (yield % / 100)
So that ₹40/kg onion is actually costing you ₹47/kg of usable onion. On a biryani that uses 80 grams of onion per portion, that is a ₹0.56 swing — small per plate, ₹560 across a 1,000-plate month, ₹6,720 across the year. Multiply by every ingredient on your menu and yield-blindness is one of the larger silent leaks in your kitchen.
Standard yields to start from (re-measure once your kitchen has settled in): leafy greens 70%, onions/garlic 85%, tomatoes 95%, whole spices 100%, paneer/butter/cream 100%, headless shell-on prawns 60%, whole fish 50–55%, chicken whole-bird 65%, mutton on-bone 80%, boneless cuts 100%, rice/dal/flour 100%.
Where this fits
- Food cost percentage targets — India — the band each format should aim for before you start pricing individual dishes
- Menu engineering matrix — India playbook — once every dish has a card, run the matrix to see which earn their place
- Menu engineering matrix calculator — feed your per-dish food costs into the live 2×2
- Food cost percentage tracker — sanity-check the period-level food cost % after re-pricing