Calculating Food Costs
How Much Does It Cost to Cook for a Crowd?
You have determined your food quantities and adjusted for yields, portion sizes and extra
helpings. Now let’s figure out how much all of this will cost. To start, it is as simple as listing every ingredient in each recipe and estimating the overall costs of those ingredients.
It is best to know the cost of recipe ingredients and other goods ahead of time to assure you stay within budget. It also allows you to adjust the menu and/or the recipes to keep expenses on target. If you compromise in some places, you might find extra dollars for other places. Obviously, you can control cost by planning a modest menu and selecting recipes with low to medium priced ingredients.
You will also have to calculate the cost of pre-made items such as potato chips, pickles, deli meats, breads, etc.
Restaurants, caterers and other food service businesses use recipe costing or plate costing as a means of calculating food costs in order to determine menu prices and subsequent profit. You can use the basis of this method for calculating food costs for quantity cooking.
Generally, cooking for a crowd is done by several individuals, cooking one or more dishes each. Each cook can cost their recipes or it can be done as a group effort.
If you are cooking more than one dish, you can also calculate the cost of specific types of products in all recipes, i.e., yellow onions, sweet peppers, heavy cream, fresh basil, etc. Then determine how many onions, how much beef, etc., is needed for all the recipes, all together.
Costing a Recipe
How to Calculate the Cost of a Recipe
Begin by examining your recipe(s) and listing each ingredient in that recipe. You will need to know the cost of each ingredient. You can easily find the cost of food products by searching online at popular food shopping sites, checking weekly store flyers and your old grocery receipts.
Here's an example of the calculation:
More Info...
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Food products are sold in boxes, bags, jars, cans and by the ounce, by the pound and everything in between. You will need to make note of the weight or number of ounces or pounds on the container label to begin your calculations.
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Some food items will be easier to calculate, such as the cost of the ground beef in the example above.
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It's hard to determine costs of some ingredients such as garlic powder, dried herbs, salt and the like. To make it easier, I used a guesstimate of the cost per teaspoon of those ingredients. You can use any reasonable measure based on the actual price of the product and how much will be needed for one or more recipes.
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Always opt for larger sizes. It is probably best to have too much of a product then not enough and it's usually more cost effective. You can either save what's leftover for yourself or others.
Cost Per Serving
Calculating the cost per serving is useful if you are charging guests for the meal, either for a profit or to cover the event planners costs.
Once you know the total cost of the recipe, you can figure out the cost per serving for the recipe, which is $1.78 in the Baked Ziti example. You can then multiply cost per serving by the number of guests planned for the event. This info can also help to determine costs for extra servings and for unexpected guests.
Cost Cutting Tips
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Time to invade the food warehouses and discount superstores. Everybody recognizes that buying in bulk from these sources is generally less expensive.
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One great resource you may have not considered is wholesale food distributors/restaurant supply stores. These are the companies that sell to food service businesses and often sell to the general public on a cash and carry basis.
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Local farmers markets and produce stands often have great deals on seasonal fruits and vegetables in bulk, such as bushels of tomatoes or corn (buy local!)
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Food cooperatives provide grocery items at the best value to their members and often sell produce grown locally by family farms.
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Grocery store bulk bins are also good sources for snack items, nuts, coffee beans, candies and the like.
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Cutting, deboning and trimming larger cuts of poultry, beef, pork or fish will certainly save you money, but make sure you know what you're doing! Asking a local butcher or fishmonger may be another option, if there's no charge.
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If possible, make use of all parts of food products, such as chicken bones and skins for chicken broth.