Food Cost Report
Food Cost Report lists every recipe-costed menu item with its Food Cost Percentage (ingredient cost as a share of menu price), colour-coded green/amber/red by band, alongside the restaurant's overall average food cost percentage — so you can spot items quietly eating your margin.
Overview
Each item shows its computed Food Cost Percentage, colour-coded green (≤25%, healthy), amber (26–35%, watch) and red (>35%, high) — the same bands used consistently across the report.
An Average Food Cost % figure summarises across all currently listed items, giving you a benchmark to compare individual items against.
Filter by Category, search by item name, and sort by Food Cost % (or other columns) to quickly surface your highest-cost items.
This report reads its figures from the same recipe costing data as Recipe Profitability — use whichever view suits the question: this one for a fast at-a-glance cost-percentage scan, Recipe Profitability for full margin/contribution detail per dish.
Before You Start
- You must have the Reports feature enabled on your plan.
- Menu items need an underlying Recipe with ingredient costs set up for a Food Cost % to be computed — items without a costed recipe won't show a meaningful figure.
Step-by-Step Guide
1 Find your highest food-cost items
- Open Food Cost Report and sort by Food Cost %.
- Review red-banded (>35%) items at the top of the list.
- Consider a menu price adjustment, portion resize, or ingredient substitution for items consistently in the red band.
2 Review food cost by category
- Use the Category filter to narrow the list (e.g. just Starters).
- Compare the category's items against the overall Average Food Cost % to see if that category is pulling your margin down.
3 Search for a specific item
- Type the item name into the search box.
- Review its Food Cost % band directly.
Every Field & Button, Explained
| Field / Button | What it does |
|---|---|
Food Cost % (green/amber/red) | Ingredient cost as a share of menu price, banded: green ≤25%, amber 26–35%, red >35%. |
Average Food Cost % | The mean Food Cost % across all currently listed (filtered) items. |
Category filter / search / sort | Narrows and orders the item list; sort defaults to Food Cost % so the highest-cost items are easy to find. |
Tips & Best Practices
- A red-banded item isn't automatically a problem if it's a high-value low-volume dish — cross-check against Item Popularity and Recipe Profitability before changing price or portioning.
- Keep recipe ingredient costs up to date — a stale recipe cost will silently produce a misleading Food Cost % here.
- Use the category filter to review one section of the menu at a time rather than scanning the full list.