Recipe Costing Template FAQs
1) What is a recipe costing template?
A recipe costing template is an easy way to calculate the exact cost of a recipe based on the price of each ingredient and the amount of the ingredient your recipe calls for.
2) Why is it important to use a recipe costing template?
Rather than totaling the overall price of your ingredients, a recipe costing template helps you calculate the exact cost per recipe or serving. Ingredients that include multiple units per package — such as ingredients that are sold in bulk or packaged by weight — can obscure the real cost of a recipe that calls for only a portion of that ingredient.
This template is useful for both professional and home chefs who know how much they are spending on a meal and which ingredients are the most cost-effective. For restaurants, a recipe costing template is essential for determining food cost percentages, pricing, and profit margins.
3) How can a recipe costing template help calculate food costs?
By inputting the price and amount of each ingredient into the recipe costing template, you can quickly calculate your total food costs. Add all the recipes on your menu for the day, week, or month, and instantly determine how much of each ingredient you will need, as well as the total cost.
4) How do you calculate how much a recipe costs?
Recipe costs are determined by calculating the price per unit of an ingredient and the amount of that ingredient you are using in the recipe.
Take the total cost of an ingredient — $4.25 for a dozen eggs, for example — then divide it by the number of servings in the package to determine the ingredient’s price per unit ($4.25/12 eggs = $0.3542 per egg). Next, determine how many units of that ingredient you will need for your recipe. If a recipe for 24 pancakes calls for 2 eggs, then the cost of eggs for that recipe ($0.3542 per egg x 2) would be $0.7084.
Repeat this process for each ingredient in the recipe, then add all the individual ingredient costs together to get the total recipe cost.
5) What information should be included in a recipe costing template?
A recipe costing template should include the name of each ingredient in a recipe along with its price per unit of measurement and the quantity of that ingredient needed. In this template, the table formula calculates the individual ingredient costs, then adds up the cost of each ingredient to determine the total recipe cost.
6) Is this recipe costing template customizable?
Yes, this recipe costing template can be fully customized to meet your needs. Create multiple ingredient tabs for different categories or days of the week, add rows for each recipe and columns for more calculations, create labels to filter and organize your recipes, and more.