Pricing guide · September 2026
The short answer: full-service restaurants run 28–35%, quick-service spots a few points lower at 25–30%. Above 35% your margin is thin; above 40% the dish is barely paying for its own ingredients. The number itself is easy — what matters is watching it move.
Per dish: plate cost ÷ menu price. A dish that costs $4.90 to plate and sells for $16.95 runs 28.9% — healthy. Blended (whole-menu) food cost is total ingredient spend ÷ total food sales over a period, usually tracked weekly against purchases.
Both matter. The per-dish number tells you which menu items to reprice; the blended number tells you whether portioning, waste or supplier prices are drifting. A menu creeping from 31% to 36% over a quarter is a supplier price rise or a portion problem waiting to be found — and the fix is usually price, not quality.
| Food cost % | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Under 28% | Room to invest in quality or portions — or you're underpriced for your market |
| 28–35% | Typical for full-service; the target band |
| 35–40% | Tight — reprice top sellers before cutting quality |
| Over 40% | Danger — the dish loses money at scale; reprice or re-plate now |
1. Reprice. The fastest lever. Even a $1 move on a top seller changes blended food cost more than weeks of waste tracking. Menu engineering tells you which dishes can take the increase: plowhorses (popular, lower margin) absorb price rises best because demand is already proven.
2. Re-plate. Same price, cheaper cost structure — swap a premium component, resize the garnish, rework the plate. This is the move for high-margin-but-slow puzzles and for dogs you don't want to kill.
3. Re-negotiate or re-spec ingredients. Supplier prices move quarterly; a $0.20/lb jump on your core protein flows straight into every plate that uses it. Track the top ten ingredients that drive 80% of your cost.
4. Control waste and portions. The slowest lever but the compounding one — scales at the line, spec cards per dish, and a weekly count. This is also where the 28–35% band quietly breaks: portions drift up two grams at a time.
Check a single dish in 15 seconds with the Food Cost Percentage Calculator — it also shows the price that brings a dish back to a 30% target. Setting a price from scratch? The Menu Pricing Calculator works backwards from ingredient costs. Then classify the whole menu into Stars, Plowhorses, Puzzles and Dogs with the Menu Engineering Matrix and print the repriced menu with the Menu Maker.
Food cost percentage is your food COGS as a share of food sales. Full COGS for a restaurant also includes paper, to-go packaging and sometimes bar product — keep food cost as its own line so the kitchen number stays clean.
Both, for different jobs. Per dish tells you what to reprice or re-plate; blended (purchases ÷ food sales, weekly) tells you if operations are drifting. A healthy blended number with one dish at 45% means your mix is subsidizing a loser.
Blended weekly (it's a purchases report, not an inventory), per-dish every time a supplier price or a menu price moves. Most operators who get burned skipped a quarter.
Not necessarily. Under 25% often means you're overpriced for the market (slowing traffic) or under-portioning (hurting reviews). The band is a health check, not a high-score — the goal is margin dollars, not the lowest percentage.