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Recipe Calculator

You’ve priced a dish on a guess before. You picked a number that felt about right, and only found out later, once GST and the real cost of every ingredient were factored in, that the margin barely existed. A menu price built on instinct is hard to walk back once customers are used to paying it. Our recipe calculator works out your true food cost, your GST-inclusive cost, and your profit margin before the dish goes anywhere near a menu.

Prawn Toast with Zesty Lemon and Herbs

Method

Step 1

Clean the prawns and ensure all of their tails have been cut off. Place the clean prawns in a bowl and juice half a lemon over the top. Mix it through and put aside to allow the prawns to soak up the juices.

Squeezing lemon on prawns

Step 2

Lay the spring onions on a board and slice the white ends into rough cuts. For this recipe, we use the white ends of the spring onions because it contains a stronger flavour than the green stems. Add the spring onions to the prawns, with a pinch of salt and pepper. Then add 50 grams of the parmesan cheese and mix together.

Adding ingredients to the soaked prawns

Step 3

Pour the mixture into a Robot Coupe for three minutes, until it forms a thick paste.

 

Prawns being placed into a blender

Step 4

Spread the paste evenly along the buttered side of the garlic bread. Sprinkle the remainder of the parmesan cheese over the top, and dress with extra sliced spring onion. Place the coated bread in a preheated oven at 150 degrees and back for eight minutes or until golden brown.

 

Spread being placed on garlic bread

Step 5

For serving, slice each loaf into five even slices and present on a wooden board. This dish is a great idea as an entree of as a catering snack bar.

Evenly slicing the toasted bread

Ingredients

Ingredient Name Qty Purchased Cost of Goods Qty Used in Recipe Total Cost
each $ each $ 0.00
g $ g $ 0.00
g $ g $ 0.00
each $ each $ 0.00
g $ g $ 0.00
g $ g $ 0.00
g $ g $ 0.00

WHAT IS A RECIPE CALCULATOR?

A recipe calculator works out what a dish costs to make and what it needs to sell for to turn a profit. Some tools under that name are really a recipe converter, turning ounces and teaspoons into metric, or a recipe multiplier that scales quantities up or down, or a nutrition calculator returning the energy and carbohydrate count per serve. Ours is a recipe cost calculator. Enter your ingredient costs and servings, and you get a total cost, a cost per serve, and the margin behind your selling price.

HOW TO USE OUR RECIPE CALCULATOR

Enter your recipe name, method and serving size, and the number of servings the recipe makes.
Select “+ Add Ingredient” to build your ingredient list, then enter the quantity purchased and cost of goods for each item.
Enter the quantity your recipe actually uses for each ingredient, in grams, millilitres or each.
Select Calculate to see your total cost across the batch, plus the same figure with GST added and your cost per serve. This is where the calculator divides your total batch cost by your number of servings, converting it into a cost per portion.
Enter a Selling Price per serve to see your Food Gross Profit, Food Markup percentage and Total Generated Profit.

WHY FOODSERVICE BUSINESSES USE OUR RECIPE CALCULATOR

Cafes and quick service kitchens change their menus often, and costing a new dish properly before it launches matters more than costing it quickly. Catering and events businesses price the same recipe at different scales throughout the year, a function for ten one week and an event for two hundred the next. Enter the servings for each job, and the calculator handles that recipe scaling without you reworking your ingredient list from scratch.

Bakeries producing large batches need to know the per-unit cost still holds as bakery ingredient prices shift. Contract caterers working to a fixed per-meal budget, such as aged care or education providers, can check a recipe against that budget before it goes into a wider meal planner or seasonal menu.

Across all of these, the value is the same. You get a cost per serve and a margin you can trust, built from your actual supplier pricing rather than an estimate.

Browse our recipes for menu inspiration, then cost them here before you commit to a price.

WHAT MAKES OUR RECIPE CALCULATOR DIFFERENT

Most recipe cost calculators are standalone software with no link to where you actually buy. Ours sits within Goodman Fielder Food Service, a foodservice supplier. Once you’ve priced a recipe and know your numbers, you’re already talking to the team that supplies the ingredients themselves. If a margin looks tighter than expected, that’s a conversation about ingredient pricing you can have straight away.

If you want to work through pricing on a specific dish or menu, our team can help. Get in touch today.

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