Food-cost & margin calculator
Get the price that actually covers labor, overhead, and your margin — not a rule of thumb. Enter what a portion costs you; the math is the same pricing engine CaterKit runs in production.
Suggested price per portion
$20.00
Margin
30%
Food-cost percentage
50%
What's in that price
- Ingredients
- $10.00
- Labor (25%)
- $2.50
- Overhead (15%)
- $1.50
- Margin
- $6.00
Most caterers land between 28–35% food cost. With labor and overhead, each portion really costs you $14.00.
That price doesn't cover your labor and overhead — you're paying to cater this.
Keep it
Keep these numbers
Your inputs ride in this page’s link, so the same numbers come back whenever you open it: on your phone, or in a message to whoever asked you for a figure.
No signup and no email wall on this calculator. The summary below is yours to copy.
Your numbers as text
Get exact costs from YOUR recipes
This is one dish, by hand. CaterKit photographs your whole menu, costs every recipe from your ingredients, and prices the quote for you — free to start.
How this calculator works
Price = cost × (1 + labor% + overhead%) ÷ (1 − target margin), rounded up to the cent — the exact formula CaterKit uses to suggest prices in the product, imported from the same code. Food-cost percentage is raw ingredient cost as a share of price (the classic 28–35% rule). Planning a whole event? Try the price-per-person calculator.