You know what a plate sells for.
Do you know what it costs?
Most kitchens price by feel — a competitor charges Rs 850, so we charge Rs 800. That holds until chicken moves, or a new cook is heavier-handed than the last one. Then a dish quietly stops making money and nothing on any screen says so.
One chicken biryani, counted properly
| Chicken · 250 g @ Rs 620/kg | Rs 155.00 |
| Rice · 180 g @ Rs 240/kg | Rs 43.20 |
| Your masala · 40 g (a base recipe) | Rs 31.60 |
| Oil, onion, yoghurt | Rs 38.00 |
| Packaging | Rs 22.00 |
| Costs you | Rs 289.80 |
| Sells at Rs 800 — food cost 36%, you keep | Rs 510.20 |
That line sits on every dish, and it recalculates the day you record a new price for chicken. There is no spreadsheet to keep up to date.
Three pieces, and they stack
Each one is built out of the one before it, which is why a price change in the pantry reaches every dish without you touching them.
Pantry
The things you buy
Flour, chicken, oil, foil boxes. You record how you buy it and what you pay — a 20 kg bag for Rs 3,400 — and the cost per gram is worked out from that.
Base recipe
The things you make in batch
Your masala, your dough, your chutney. Written down once and used in five dishes. When cumin goes up you change one number, not nine.
Menu recipe
The things you sell
A dish on your menu, built from raw ingredients, base recipes, or both. This is where cost, food-cost % and margin appear.
What you get back
A real cost on every dish
Cost, food-cost % and margin, per dish, updating themselves as your purchase prices change. You can finally see which dishes earn and which only look busy.
Stock that counts itself
Every sale deducts the ingredients — including the ones inside a base recipe. Sell 40 biryanis and the rice leaves the pantry without anyone counting it.
Fewer things sold that you cannot make
When an ingredient hits zero, the dishes that need it can come off the menu on their own, before a customer orders one.
Your wastage, for the first time
The gap between what the recipes say you used and what the shelf says is left. Most kitchens have never seen that number, and it is usually the expensive one.
It is an evening of typing, and nobody can do that part for you
Someone has to write down what each dish is made of. There is no import that knows your masala. What we can promise is that you do it once: after that the arithmetic runs on every plate, forever, and a price change reaches every dish on its own.
Start with your ten best sellers, not all ninety. They are most of your revenue and most of your risk. A dish with no recipe behaves exactly as it does today.
How to set up food costing
- 1
Turn on recipe costing
In Store → Settings → Restaurant kit, switch on Recipe costing. Only an owner or admin can do this.
- 2
Fill the pantry
Record your raw ingredients and how you buy them — a 20 kg bag of flour for Rs 3,400. Start with the twenty biggest by spend, which are most of your food cost.
- 3
Write your base recipes
For anything you prep in batch — masala, dough, chutney — list its ingredients and set the batch yield, for example "this makes 2 kg".
- 4
Write your menu recipes
For each dish you sell, list what goes into it. Cost, food-cost percentage and margin appear as soon as you save.
Questions restaurant owners ask
- How do you calculate food cost percentage for a dish?
- Food cost percentage is the cost of a dish’s ingredients divided by its selling price. A biryani costing Rs 289.80 in ingredients and selling at Rs 800 has a food cost of about 36%. POS Line works this out per dish from the recipe and updates it whenever an ingredient price changes.
- Does it deduct ingredients from stock when I sell a dish?
- Yes. Every sale deducts the dish’s ingredients from the pantry automatically, including ingredients that come through a base recipe. Sell 40 biryanis and roughly 10 kg of rice leaves stock without anyone counting.
- What is a base recipe?
- A base recipe is something you prepare in batch and use in several dishes — a masala, a dough, a marinade. You write it once and every dish built on it stays correct on its own. It is worked out rather than declared: an item becomes a base recipe when it has its own ingredients and a dish uses it.
- Do I have to write a recipe for every dish before it works?
- No. Start with your best sellers. A dish with no recipe carries on working exactly as it does today — it simply does not show a cost yet.
- Will my cooks have to change how they work?
- No. Staff ring up sales as they always have. The costing happens behind the screen after the sale, so nothing about service changes.
- What if my recipe is not exact?
- Close is enough to be useful. A cost that is a few percent out still tells you which dishes earn and which only look busy, which is more than most kitchens know today.
Set it up once. It pays you back every service.
- Included in the restaurant kit
- Works on the tablet in the kitchen
- Your costs stay yours — staff see only what you allow