Thirteen working calculators, built by an operations director with 25+ years in food service. Enter your own numbers — purchase prices, yields, portion sizes, shift hours — and get the answer on the same screen. No course to sit through, no consultant to hire, no software to subscribe to.
Food cost came in at 34% instead of 30%. That line is true and completely useless — it does not name the dish, the vendor, the portion or the shift that did it. These workbooks are built to name it.
A dish sells well, so nobody questions it. Priced against a plate cost nobody has recalculated since the last invoice increase, it can lose money on every cover.
Two suppliers, two sticker prices. Once trim and cook loss are counted, the cheaper case is regularly the more expensive one per usable pound.
Averaged across the week, labor looks fine. One shift may not be covering its own payroll — and the weekly average hides it perfectly.
Over-pouring at the bar, a subscription nobody cancelled, a delivery platform charging more than the order earns. Small, recurring, invisible on a monthly statement.
Food cost and payroll are the two lines you can actually move. Put your own numbers in and see what they leave you at the bottom — and what a few points would be worth. Nothing is sent anywhere; this runs in your browser.
Everything below prime cost is held at 30.5% of sales — 8% occupancy, 17.5% utilities, supplies, marketing and repairs, 5% depreciation and interest. That is a middle-of-the-road full-service structure, not a best case: a typical independent keeps 3–6% at the bottom. This is an illustration, not a forecast for your business — the workbooks below do the same arithmetic on your actual invoices, dish by dish and shift by shift.
Every one is sold on its own at $150, and each is built to answer a question a P&L cannot. Start with the problem that is costing you now — open any card to see the tabs inside before you decide. If more than one sounds like you, the packs below cost less than buying them one by one.
Where the money leaves the plate: what a dish actually costs, what it should be priced at, which items earn their place on the menu, and which line items you are quietly overpaying on.
The true cost of one dish, the price it should carry, and what a single point of prime cost is worth to you in dollars.
Sticker price is not what you pay. This is what a usable pound actually costs you, vendor by vendor.
Standard menu engineering stops at a label. This one tells you which way to move the item — and what to check first.
Nineteen cost categories ranked by what they are worth against how hard they are to capture — so you know what to do Monday morning.
What happens between opening and close: whether a shift pays for itself, who is upselling and who is not, what is leaving the bar untracked, how bonuses are decided, and what an inspector will ask to see.
Free templates tell you if you have a labor problem. This one tells you which shift, and which of four causes is behind it.
Turns a vague sense that some servers upsell better into a specific, defensible number.
Most owners suspect the bar is leaking without ever putting a number on it. This puts the number on it.
Plenty of articles explain how a bonus plan should work. This is the calculator that actually runs the math.
The decisions made outside the kitchen: what a delivery app really pays you, whether the lease itself is the problem, what marketing spend is actually returning, and what it costs to open before you sign anything.
Delivery orders are up and the bank balance is not. This shows you why, one order at a time.
Every other workbook finds a specific leak. This one answers the question underneath them all: how much do you need to sell before you keep a dollar?
Builds a budget from what a new guest is worth to you — not from the borrowed rule that everyone repeats.
The one workbook in the library that is not for an operator already running a restaurant.
Not a calculator. This is the daily record itself — what was checked, when, by whom, and what was done when a reading came back out of range. The workbook an inspector asks to see, and the one a manager fills in during the shift rather than after it.
The daily records an inspector asks for, in one place instead of on seven clipboards.
Most problems do not sit alone. Purchasing, portioning and menu pricing are the same problem seen from three sides — and the workbooks are built to be used together. Take a full section and you pay for one workbook less.
Everything that decides what a plate costs you and what it should be sold for.
Everything that happens between opening and close — labor, service, the bar and how bonuses are decided.
The decisions made outside the kitchen — platforms, the lease, marketing spend and opening a new venue.
Packs are the same workbooks sold above, nothing is abridged. If you would rather start with one, every workbook is still $150 on its own. The Food Safety Control Point Log is sold on its own — it is a record book rather than a calculator, and it does not sit inside any of the three packs.
One sheet is open to everyone: Recipe Cost, from the Food Cost & Menu Price workbook. It is the real file with an example dish already in it — type over the blue cells and watch the plate cost and the suggested price move. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to install.
The sheet below is live, not a picture. Type over the blue cells — a purchase price, a portion size — and every total recalculates in front of you. Nothing you enter is saved and the file itself never changes. What you buy is the complete workbook in Excel, with the example rows cleared for your own numbers: the benchmark ranges for your format of venue, the prime cost snapshot, and the summary of what the numbers found.
Recipe Cost, from the Food Cost & Menu Price workbook, running live.
Costing a plate is not a trade secret — it is in every textbook, and the whole method is above for you to try. What is not in a textbook is what sits inside the other twelve: the benchmark ranges for your own format of venue, the diagnostic that names which of four causes is behind a bad shift, the recommended action against every dish on your menu, and the supplier thresholds with the wording to use in that conversation. That is the part you are paying for, and it is written in plain sight on those sheets — which is why they are not opened before purchase.
Every workbook is listed tab by tab on the cards above, so you know exactly what is in the file before you buy it.
Thirteen workbooks are finished and available above. These are the ones being built now — the list follows what operators keep asking for. Tell us what you would use.
Reviews, surveys, social comments and feedback left on your own site, in one picture — what guests actually keep saying, and what it costs you when they stop coming back.
A control log rather than a calculator, in the same shape as the Food Safety one: kWh per square foot against a reference range for your format of venue, and an equipment walkthrough that finds where the power is going. Utilities, paper and chemicals themselves are already covered inside the Cost Savings Opportunity Calculator.
If the number you need is not in the library yet, write to us. Several of the workbooks above exist because an operator asked for them.
Tell us which workbook you want and where to send the invoice. It takes a minute and commits you to nothing.
An invoice made out to your business, with our terms attached. Pay it by bank transfer. We reply the same business day.
An Excel file, yours to keep. It works in Excel 2016 and newer, Excel for Mac and Google Sheets. Nothing is installed and nothing connects to your POS.
Input cells are marked; everything else is locked and calculates itself. A Read Me tab walks through the first entry. Most owners find their first repriceable dish on day one.
By invoice. You place an order, we send an invoice made out to your business — or to you personally, whichever you prefer — and you pay it by bank transfer. We are not running card checkout on this page yet, which is why every order goes through a person on our side.
We answer orders the same business day. The workbook goes out as soon as the payment clears — with a bank transfer that is usually one to three business days, and company accounts payable departments sometimes take longer than that.
Each workbook is an .xlsx file. Excel 2016 or newer, Excel for Mac and Google Sheets all open it. Nothing is installed, nothing connects to your POS, and the file is yours to keep.
No. The cells you fill in are marked and everything else is locked and calculates on its own. If you can type a purchase price into a box, you can run these.
Partly, and on purpose. The Recipe Cost sheet is open to everyone and runs live on this page — put your own numbers into it before you decide. The rest of the library is not opened, because what you are buying is written in plain sight on those sheets: the benchmark ranges, the diagnostics and the recommended actions. What each workbook contains is listed tab by tab on the cards above.
No. One payment for the workbook and it is yours. There is no renewal, nothing expires and there is nothing to cancel.
Because these are digital files, we do not offer open-ended returns — the live sheet and the tab-by-tab list on every card are there precisely so you can check first. If the workbook is defective — it will not open, the formulas are broken, or we sent the wrong one — write to us and we will fix it or refund you in full.
Each workbook stands on its own. Start with the problem that is costing you now: purchasing and portions point to Food Cost or Yield, a menu that sells but does not earn points to Menu Profitability, a payroll that outruns your sales points to Operational Efficiency, and a business you have not opened yet points to the Startup Budget. If two or three of those sound like you, the packs cost less than buying them one by one.
They are built for food service broadly — full service, fast casual, cafés, bakeries and food trucks all cost recipes the same way, and the benchmark ranges adjust to your format. The yield tables lean toward scratch kitchens; a purely assembly-based operation will use fewer of the rows.
Yes — that is consulting rather than a workbook, and it starts with a free Express Audit. We look at where your margin is going and tell you in writing what to fix first.
A single item running four points over target on 20 covers a day is roughly $2,000 a year walking out of the kitchen. One workbook costs less than that single mistake does in a month — and it is built to find the rest of them.
Digital products. Prices in USD. These tools provide general operational calculations and are not financial, tax, or legal advice.