A recipe cost card lists every ingredient in a dish with its quantity, unit cost and yield, and adds them up to a plate cost. Divide by the menu price to get food cost percentage. Cost sub-recipes such as sauces once and reuse them. Update when ingredient prices change.
What goes on the card
A recipe cost card has a dish name, a portion size, a list of ingredients, and for each ingredient: quantity, unit, cost per unit and the cost of that quantity. At the bottom it has the plate cost, the menu price, the food cost percentage and the margin per plate.
Step 1: list every ingredient
Write down everything that goes on or in the dish, including oil, salt, garnish and the container for takeout. Stand at the station and watch the dish being made. Recipes from memory miss things.
Step 2: pick units that match
Buy by the case and use by the ounce, so convert. If a ten-pound case costs forty-five dollars, a pound costs four fifty and an ounce about twenty-eight cents. Keep the unit you use at the station on the card. The numbers here are made up.
Step 3: apply yield
Not everything you buy reaches the plate. Trim, bone and cooking loss lower the usable amount. Yield is the usable amount divided by the purchased amount. If a pound of raw vegetables yields ten ounces trimmed, the yield is about 62 percent, and the cost per usable ounce is higher than the purchase price suggests. Weigh a few samples to find your own yield.
Step 4: cost sub-recipes once
A house sauce, a marinade or a spice mix appears in many dishes. Cost it as its own recipe with a batch yield, then use a per-portion cost in each dish. When the sauce cost changes, every dish that uses it changes with it.
Step 5: add it up
Add the ingredient costs to get the plate cost. Divide by the menu price for food cost percentage. Subtract from the price for margin. Check the result: if it looks too good, a step is probably missing.
Step 6: use it
Review the highest-selling dishes first. If a plate is above the cost you want, change the portion, the recipe, the supplier or the price. Pair this with menu engineering.
Keep it alive
A card that is never updated is worse than none. Systems that tie recipe cards to ingredient prices keep them current. Recipe costing in Zorveta One updates every dish when an ingredient cost changes.