Batch and portion costing
Cost a batch recipe and scale it properly.
Enter the batch once, set how many portions it yields, and get the cost of one.
Batch cooking is where costing quietly goes wrong, because there are two different quantities in play and it is easy to mix them up. There is what you put into the pot, and there is how many portions come out of it. A caldereta made with 1.5 kilos of beef is not a costing until you say how many plates it becomes.
Set the servings field to the number of portions the batch actually yields — not the number the recipe claims, the number you get after the pot is scraped. The calculator divides the whole batch cost by that figure. If a batch that should give ten portions reliably gives eight and a half, use eight and a half; the sheet should describe the kitchen, not the other way round.
This page is equally useful for home bakers and small producers selling at markets. The arithmetic is identical whether you are costing a tray of brownies or a service of stew, and the yield question matters more the more the food shrinks, reduces or gets trimmed on its way to the plate.
Yield is the whole game in batch cooking
effective unit cost = purchase unit cost / (yield % / 100)
cost per portion = total batch cost / portions actually produced
Braises reduce. Roasts lose fat and moisture. Vegetables lose skin, root and stalk. Every one of those is a real cost that never appears on an invoice, and every one of them is captured by the Yield column rather than by pretending the purchase weight is the usable weight.
If you are unsure of a yield, weigh once. Weigh what you buy, weigh what makes it into the pot, and divide. Ten minutes of weighing will improve a costing more than an hour of estimating.
Scaling a recipe without scaling the errors
Doubling a batch rarely doubles every cost. Aromatics and seasoning often scale less than proportionally, and yield frequently improves at larger volumes because the ratio of surface to mass changes. If you scale a recipe substantially, recost it rather than multiplying the answer.
What does scale linearly is packaging, and it is worth pricing separately for exactly that reason: it is the one line where volume gives you no relief unless you buy in larger quantities.
Costing for market stalls and small batches
If you sell direct, cost the packaging, the label and the bag, because they are a large share of a low-priced item. A 60-peso brownie in a 9-peso box and a 3-peso sticker has a very different margin from a 60-peso brownie on a plate.
Set the selling price to zero while you are still working out the cost. The calculator will show the cost per portion and simply tell you it needs a price before it can talk about margin, rather than inventing a percentage from nothing.
Questions people actually ask
What if my batch yields a fraction of a portion?
Enter the fraction. Servings accepts decimals, so a batch giving eight and a half portions should be entered as 8.5 rather than rounded, which would misstate the cost of every portion.
How do I handle an ingredient I use only a pinch of?
Enter it in the unit you can measure. If it genuinely rounds to nothing at portion level it will show a very small cost, which is the correct answer and takes a few seconds to confirm.
Should water be costed?
Usually not, and it is left at zero in the bakery preset. Cost it if you use bottled or filtered water in volume, or if your water bill is genuinely driven by production.
Can I use this for cost per kilo rather than per portion?
Yes. Set servings to the number of kilos the batch yields and the cost per serving becomes a cost per kilo.
[mc_product_card slug=”recipe-costing-spreadsheet” lead=”Costing more than one recipe?”]
Related
This calculator gives estimates based on what you enter. Real profitability also depends on labour, rent, utilities, taxes, delivery commissions, waste, discounts, and other operating costs.