Restaurant food cost percentage: formula, plate costs and what moves it

Food cost percentage is the cost of the food you used, divided by your food sales, times 100. Get the cost from your stock counts: food on hand at the start of the month, plus food purchases, minus food on hand at the end. In the made-up month below, $35,960 of food against $112,400 of food sales gives 32.0%.

This guide covers food alone: the formula, a worked month, how to cost one plate, what moves the number, and what federal price data and restaurant filings report. Our prime cost guide adds labor to food and drink, and lists each chain's food share by brand. This page is the plate-level work behind that food line.

What is the food cost percentage formula?

1. Cost of food used = food inventory at the start of the period + food purchases − food inventory at the end of the period.
2. Food cost percentage = cost of food used ÷ food sales × 100.

Use food sales after discounts and comps, before sales tax and tips. Keep drinks on their own line, because a pint and a plate carry different costs, and one can hide a change in the other. If the bar takes lemons or cream from the kitchen, move that cost from food to drink.

Count purchases after credits for returns and short deliveries. Take off vendor rebates too: Chipotle's 2025 10-K says it records vendor rebates and promotions as a reduction of its food, beverage and packaging costs or its other operating costs.

How does it work out for a month?

Every figure below is made up for one full-service restaurant. Put in your own counts, invoices and sales.

Line	Made-up figure
Food inventory on the first of the month	Opening stock: $11,850
Food purchases, after credits	Purchases: $36,420
Food inventory on the last day of the month	Closing stock: $12,310
Cost of food used (11,850 + 36,420 − 12,310)	Food used: $35,960
Food sales after discounts and comps	Food sales: $112,400
Actual food cost (35,960 ÷ 112,400)	Actual food cost: 32.0%
Theoretical food cost: each dish's plate cost times the number sold, from the POS item sales report	Theoretical food cost: $33,420, or 29.7% of food sales
Gap between actual and theoretical	Gap: $2,540, or 2.3 points

The gap is food you paid for that no plate on the sales report accounts for. Waste, over-portioning, staff meals, food given away without being rung up, theft and counting errors all land there.

How do you cost one plate?

List every ingredient on the plate, the amount you serve, and what that amount costs at your latest invoice price. Weigh the portion as the cook serves it. For produce, divide the purchase price by the share left after trimming: if a pound of romaine at $1.80 leaves 12 ounces you can use, you are paying $2.40 for each usable pound.

Here is a made-up plate of three ground beef tacos with rice and beans, sold for $13.00.

Ingredient	Portion and made-up price	Cost
Ground beef	5 ounces raw at $5.12 a pound	Beef: $1.60
Corn tortillas	3 at $0.06 each	Tortillas: $0.18
Shredded cheese	2 ounces at $4.00 a pound	Cheese: $0.50
Romaine	1 ounce usable, $1.80 a pound with 75% left after trimming	Romaine: $0.15
Pico de gallo	2 ounces, costed from the batch recipe	Pico: $0.22
Rice and beans	4 ounces of each, costed from the batch recipes	Rice and beans: $0.45
Salsa cup, oil and spices	Per plate	Salsa, oil and spices: $0.28
Plate cost	Sum of the lines	Plate cost: $3.38, or 26.0% of the $13.00 price

Now say ground beef costs 9.6% more, the rise in the federal average store price for 100% ground beef from August 2025 to August 2026 (see the table further down). The beef line goes to $1.75, the plate to $3.53, and the plate's food cost to 27.2%. To get back to 26.0%, the price would need to be about $13.60. Recost your best sellers whenever a main ingredient's invoice price moves.

What moves food cost percentage?

Cause	What happens	Where to check
Ingredient prices	The same plate costs more or less to make	Price per unit on this week's invoices against last month's
Menu prices	The same plate brings in more or less, so its share changes	Date of the last price change, dish by dish
Sales mix	Guests order more of the dishes that cost a larger share of their price	POS item sales report, month against month
Portions	Cooks serve more than the recipe	Weigh five plates of a best seller during a rush
Waste and spoilage	Food goes in the bin, so no sale covers it	A waste log by the bin, filled in every shift
Comps and discounts	Food goes out with little or no sale behind it	Discount and comp report in the POS
Counting and invoices	A missed shelf, a wrong unit or a missing credit changes the result on paper	Same counter, same sheet, and invoices checked against deliveries

What do federal price data and chain filings report?

The US Department of Agriculture's September 2026 Food Price Outlook reports that prices at restaurants and other food service outlets, measured by the food-away-from-home price index, were 3.4% higher in August 2026 than a year before. Wholesale beef prices were 3.1% higher over the same year, and the Department forecasts wholesale beef up 8.5% for 2026. It forecasts retail egg prices down 29.4% for 2026.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also tracks average store prices for single items. These are prices shoppers pay at the store. Your distributor's prices will differ. The series still show which way an ingredient is moving.

BLS average store price, US city average	August 2025	August 2026	Change
Ground beef, 100% beef, per pound	August 2025 ground beef: $6.32	August 2026 ground beef: $6.92	Ground beef: up 9.6%
Chicken breast, boneless, per pound	August 2025 chicken breast: $4.21	August 2026 chicken breast: $4.17	Chicken breast: down 0.9%
Eggs, grade A large, per dozen	August 2025 eggs: $3.59	August 2026 eggs: $2.27	Eggs: down 36.7%

Sources: BLS series for ground beef, chicken breast and eggs, read through the St. Louis Fed's FRED site. The change column is our arithmetic on the unrounded figures.

Restaurant companies explain what moved their food cost each year in their 10-K filings. Each company defines its own line, so read the reasons alongside the levels.

Company and year	Food cost line	What the filing says moved it
Chipotle, 2025	Chipotle food, beverage and packaging: 29.6% of total revenue, down from 29.8%	Chipotle: a 0.6% benefit from menu price increases and some cost savings, partly offset by 0.4% of inflation, mainly beef and chicken, and 0.2% from tariffs
Texas Roadhouse, 2025	Texas Roadhouse food and beverage: 35.0% of restaurant and other sales, up from 33.4%	Texas Roadhouse: commodity inflation of 6.1%, due to higher beef costs, and shifts within the menu, partly offset by a higher guest check
Darden (Olive Garden, LongHorn and others), fiscal year ended May 31, 2026	Darden food and beverage: 30.6% of sales, up from 30.3%	Darden: a 1.2% impact from inflation, partly offset by a 0.9% impact from pricing
Wendy's, 2025	Wendy's food and paper: 31.8% of company-operated restaurant sales, up from 31.0%	Wendy's gives reasons for its cost of sales as a whole: higher commodity costs, fewer customers and higher pay rates, partly offset by a higher average check and labor savings

Sources: Chipotle's 10-K linked above, Texas Roadhouse's 2025 10-K, Darden's fiscal 2026 10-K and Wendy's 2025 10-K.

In each filing, commodity costs, often beef, pushed the share up, and menu prices or a higher check pushed it down. None of these sources sets a target food cost. Chipotle counts packaging in its line and Wendy's counts paper, so a sandwich shop that leaves packaging out will look lower for that reason alone. Track your own figure month against month, and read the profit margin guide to see how food fits with the rest of the P&L.

What should you check each month?

1. Count food stock on the last day of the month, with the same person, the same sheet and the same units.
2. Work out actual food cost from the count, and keep drinks separate.
3. Pull item sales from the POS and multiply by plate costs to get theoretical food cost.
4. If the gap between the two grew, read the waste log and the comp report, then weigh portions on your top five dishes.
5. Recost any dish whose main ingredient moved on the invoice, starting with the best sellers. Our menu engineering guide shows how to weigh a price change against how often the dish sells.
6. When you change a price, change it everywhere guests order: the POS, the online menu, delivery apps and any phone ordering service.

Maple Pro takes phone orders into supported POS systems, listed on our integrations page, and our product page says menu-update timing depends on the integration. If you use it, ask how a price change reaches phone orders before you raise prices.

Published by Maple, which sells AI phone answering and ordering to restaurants. This AI-assisted guide combines the USDA's September 2026 Food Price Outlook, BLS average price series read through FRED, and 10-K filings from Chipotle, Texas Roadhouse, Darden and Wendy's with an original worked month and plate costing. Every figure in the worked month and the plate is made up. The guide sets no target food cost and makes no claim about any restaurant's results.