How to Calculate Food Cost Percentage for Your Restaurant

Food cost percentage is the most important financial metric for any restaurant. It tells you what share of your revenue is being spent on ingredients and supplies — and whether that share is healthy or slowly eating your business. Yet most restaurant owners in MENA either don't track it at all, or calculate it once a month when the damage is already done. This guide covers the formula, the benchmarks, and how to use it weekly to protect your margins.

The Food Cost Percentage Formula

Food cost percentage = (Total food and ingredient cost ÷ Total food revenue) × 100. For example: if your restaurant spent $8,000 on food and supplies in a week and generated $28,000 in revenue, your food cost percentage is 28.6%. This number is your baseline. Every week after, you compare to it.

What Is a Good Food Cost Percentage?

Benchmarks vary by restaurant type, but as a guide: fast-casual restaurants typically target 25–30%, full-service restaurants 28–35%, and catering businesses 30–38% depending on menu complexity. What matters more than the benchmark is consistency — a stable 32% is healthier than one that swings between 27% and 41% each week. Unpredictable food cost usually means a supplier pricing problem, waste, or over-ordering.

What Throws Off Your Food Cost Calculation

• Supplier invoices not logged when they arrive — gaps in your cost data
• Mixing food purchases with non-food purchases in one category
• Not accounting for opening and closing stock (ideal food cost vs. actual)
• Staff meals and wastage not included in food cost
• Multi-currency purchases recorded in the wrong currency

Tracking Food Cost Weekly vs Monthly

Monthly food cost tracking tells you something went wrong. Weekly tracking tells you while you can still fix it. A spike in food cost in week two of a month — caught immediately — might mean a supplier raised prices without telling you. Caught at month end, you've already paid for three more weeks at the wrong price. The tool that changes this is simple: log supplier invoices as they arrive, and review the weekly food cost number every Monday.

Shukran Fulus calculates food cost percentage automatically for MENA restaurants — log your supplier invoices and the system tracks it week by week, alerting you when the number moves out of range. Join the waitlist to get early access.