Food Cost Gap Calculator
When food cost exceeds recipe targets, unrecorded kitchen waste, portion creep, and inventory shrinkage are silently draining gross margins. Compare POS theoretical usage against physical inventory counts.
Enter your monthly food purchases and inventory counts. Shrinkage gap and cash drain will calculate live below.
Monthly Inventory Balance Sheet
Actual COGS formulaHow an Extra 0.75 oz Compounding Destroys Profit
Line cooks working without pre-portioned bags or scales often "eyeball" protein cuts. Even a small fraction of an ounce over standard multiplies across thousands of plates.
Step 2: Live Calculated Kitchen Variance & Shrinkage Drain
Dynamic Real-Time OutputHow to use this calculator
This calculator compares what your recipes say food should cost with what you actually used, and shows what the difference and over-portioning cost you each year.
- Enter food sales for the month and your recipe (theoretical) food cost percentage.
- Enter opening inventory, purchases and closing inventory for the same month.
- Add how many protein plates you serve a week, how much over the recipe they go, and the price per pound.
- Look at the gap in dollars, then find where it comes from: waste, portions, theft or recipes that need updating.
What’s a good number?
Food cost is typically 28–35% of food sales.
The gap between actual and recipe food cost should be as small as you can make it. Track it every month; a growing gap is an early warning.
Worked example
An example restaurant with recipes costed at 29%. The figures are invented; the results are what this calculator gives for them.
| Food sales for the month | $60,000 |
|---|---|
| Recipe food cost | 29% |
| Opening inventory + purchases − closing | $8,000 + $19,500 − $7,800 |
| Protein over-portion | 1 oz on 400 plates a week at $12/lb |
| Actual food cost | 32.8% |
|---|---|
| Gap per month | $2,300 |
| Gap per year | $27,600 |
| Over-portioning per year | $15,600 |
Actual food cost is 3.8 points above the recipes. One extra ounce of protein per plate alone costs $15,600 a year here.
Common questions
What is theoretical food cost?
What food should have cost based on your recipe costs and what you sold. Actual food cost is what you really used, from your inventory counts. The difference is waste, over-portioning, theft or out-of-date recipe costs.
How do I calculate actual food cost?
Opening inventory plus purchases minus closing inventory gives the food you used. Divide it by food sales for the same period and multiply by 100.
How do I reduce the gap?
Keep a waste log, portion with scales and scoops, update recipe costs when prices change, and count high-cost items weekly at the same time.
Every formula and assumption is on How we calculate.
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Actual food cost
34.0%
Lost to waste / month
$3,531