Excel for restaurants and food service

For owners, chefs and managers who live by thin margins and weekly numbers. Excel works out your real food cost from inventory counts, what each plate costs and should sell for, labor and prime cost as a share of sales, what waste is costing you, and which dishes earn the most. Every formula below runs on a week of sales from a casual restaurant you can edit.

Restaurant owners and GMs
Chefs and kitchen managers
Cafe, food truck and catering operators
Bar and restaurant bookkeepers

Sample data

Every result on this page comes from this sheet, calculated by the same engine the Cellwise app uses. Change a number and watch the formulas react.

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
1	Dish	Category	Plate cost	Menu price	Sold	Wasted	This week
2	Margherita pizza	Mains	3.15	16	212	6	Opening inventory	4120
3	Chicken parm	Mains	5.4	22	148	4	Purchases	5480
4	Steak frites	Mains	11.8	34	96	3	Closing inventory	3890
5	Salmon bowl	Mains	7.95	24	121	9	Labor cost	6850
6	Caesar salad	Starters	2.6	12	165	7	Target food cost %	0.3
7	Garlic knots	Starters	0.85	7	240	12
8	Soup of the day	Starters	1.4	8	88	14
9	Tiramisu	Desserts	1.95	9	110	5
10	Cheesecake	Desserts	2.3	10	74	8
11	Kids pasta	Mains	1.2	8	64	2

What Excel does for restaurants

Work out your actual food cost %

Actual food cost is what you used, not what you bought: opening inventory plus purchases minus closing inventory. Divide it by food sales for the same period to get food cost %. It only works with real counts at both ends of the period, so count the same day and time each week.

Purchases alone swing with delivery days. A big order on Saturday makes one week look terrible and the next look great, while the inventory method evens it out.

=(H2+H3-H4)/SUMPRODUCT(D2:D11,E2:E11)

Result: 0.29399649882 shows as 29.4% with Percent format

29.4% food cost: $5,710 of food used against $19,422 of food sales, just under the 30% target in H6.

Compare actual with theoretical food cost

Theoretical food cost is what the food should have cost if every plate matched its recipe card: plate cost times portions sold, added up. The gap between actual and theoretical is food that left the kitchen without being sold: waste, over-portioning, comps, mistakes or theft.

Expressed in dollars, the gap is easy to act on. A cook adding an extra 20 g of salmon to every bowl shows up here long before anyone notices it on the line.

=ROUND((H2+H3-H4)-SUMPRODUCT(C2:C11,E2:E11),2)

Result: 930.55

$930.55 of food went missing this week: $5,710 used against $4,779.45 that the recipes account for. Logged waste explains only about $226 of it.

Price a dish to hit your target food cost

To price for a food cost target, divide the plate cost by the target %. A $7.95 salmon bowl at a 30% target needs a price of $26.50. Then round to a price that fits your menu.

Not every dish has to hit the same target. Low-cost items like pasta and pizza often run well under, which gives you room on steak or seafood. What matters is the blended food cost across what actually sells.

=ROUND(C5/H6,2)

Result: 26.5

$26.50 is the price for a 30% food cost on the salmon bowl. At the current $24 it runs at 33.1%.

See which dishes earn the most

Food cost % alone can steer you wrong. Steak frites has the highest food cost % on this menu, but each plate leaves $22.20 after food cost. Multiply the profit per plate by the number sold to see the dollars each dish really brings in.

This is the idea behind menu engineering: keep and feature the high-volume, high-profit dishes, and rework or reprice the ones that are neither.

=INDEX(A2:A11,MATCH(MAX((D2:D11-C2:C11)*E2:E11),(D2:D11-C2:C11)*E2:E11,0))

Result: Margherita pizza

Margherita pizza: $12.85 a plate over 212 sold is $2,724 of gross profit, the most on the menu even though steak earns more per plate.

Track labor % and prime cost

Labor % is labor cost divided by sales. Use your total labor cost (wages plus the payroll costs you pay on top) so weeks compare fairly. Prime cost is food cost plus labor cost: the two biggest costs you control, and the first number many operators look at each week.

A common rule of thumb for full-service restaurants is prime cost around 60 to 65% of sales, but it varies by concept, so compare against your own past weeks first.

=(H2+H3-H4+H5)/SUMPRODUCT(D2:D11,E2:E11)

Result: 0.64668932139 shows as 64.7% with Percent format

Prime cost is 64.7% of sales: $5,710 food plus $6,850 labor on $19,422. Labor alone is 35.3%.

Put a dollar value on waste

A waste log only gets attention when it is in dollars. Multiply wasted portions by plate cost for each dish and add them up. Break it down by category to see where to look first.

Soup of the day is a typical culprit: cheap per portion, so nobody worries, but 14 portions binned out of 102 made means one in seven bowls is thrown away. Make smaller batches more often.

=SUMPRODUCT(C2:C11,F2:F11)

Result: 226

$226 of logged waste this week. The salmon bowl is the biggest single cost at $71.55 for 9 portions.

Practice: 8 exercises

Use the sample data above. Type a formula and press Check: it is graded by a real spreadsheet engine, the way Cellwise grades lessons.

1What were food sales for the week?

Your formula for exercise 1

Show answer
=SUMPRODUCT(D2:D11,E2:E11) = 19422. SUMPRODUCT multiplies each dish's price by how many sold and adds the results: $19,422.
2What is the food cost % of the steak frites (row 4)?

Your formula for exercise 2

Show answer
=C4/D4 = 0.34705882353. $11.80 / $34 is 34.7%, the highest on the menu.
3How many plates were sold in total?

Your formula for exercise 3

Show answer
=SUM(E2:E11) = 1318. SUM adds every portion sold: 1,318.
4What was the actual food cost in dollars for the week?

Your formula for exercise 4

Show answer
=H2+H3-H4 = 5710. What you started with plus what came in, minus what is left, is what you used: $5,710.
5What is labor cost as a % of food sales?

Your formula for exercise 5

Show answer
=H5/SUMPRODUCT(D2:D11,E2:E11) = 0.35269282257. $6,850 / $19,422 is 35.3%.
6How many dishes have a food cost % above the target in H6?

Your formula for exercise 6

Show answer
=SUMPRODUCT(--(C2:C11/D2:D11>H6)) = 2. Two dishes run above 30%: steak frites (34.7%) and the salmon bowl (33.1%).
7What did wasted starters cost?

Your formula for exercise 7

Show answer
=SUMPRODUCT((B2:B11="Starters")*C2:C11*F2:F11) = 48. Caesar salad $18.20, garlic knots $10.20 and soup $19.60 add up to $48.
8What menu price puts the Caesar salad (row 6) at the target food cost in H6, rounded up to the next 50 cents?

Your formula for exercise 8

Show answer
=ROUNDUP(C6/H6*2,0)/2 = 9. 2.60 / 0.30 = 8.67, which rounds up to $9. The current $12 price is comfortably above it.

Free templates for restaurants

Guided project: Weekly order sheet with par levels

Set par levels from daily usage, then turn a stock count into a supplier order in cases, with the cost.

6 steps in the Cellwise app. Each step checks your formula in a real grid, with hints when you get stuck. Part of Cellwise Plus.

Open guided projects

Guides for these formulas

FAQ

What is the formula for food cost percentage?

Food cost % = (opening inventory + purchases - closing inventory) / food sales for the same period. In Excel, with the counts in cells: =(B3+B4-B5)/B2, formatted as a percentage.

How do I calculate menu price from food cost in Excel?

Divide the plate cost by your target food cost %: =plate_cost/target. A $3.15 pizza at a 25% target needs $12.60. Round with =ROUNDUP(price*2,0)/2 for the next 50 cents.

How do I calculate par levels in Excel?

Multiply average daily usage by the days until your next delivery, add a safety buffer, and round up: =ROUNDUP(daily_use*days*(1+buffer),0). Order the difference between par and what is on hand, rounded up to whole cases.

How do I calculate labor cost percentage for a restaurant?

Divide total labor cost for the period by sales for the same period: =labor/sales. Include the payroll costs you pay on top of wages so the number is complete.

Excel for other fields

Updated November 2, 2026