Guides
Cost per portion and margin calculator
Most meal-plan operators know their revenue precisely and their food cost approximately. This closes that gap using your own numbers — there are no industry averages here, because we have none worth citing.
The calculator
Enter your ingredient costs for one batch, how many portions it yields, and what you charge. Everything is computed in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.
Interactive tool
- Food cost per portion, adjusted for your usable yield after trim and cooking loss
- Fully-loaded cost per portion, including packaging and delivery
- Margin per portion in both currency and percentage terms
- Arithmetic performed in minor units, so repeated decimal rounding cannot drift
- No stored data and no defaults — every figure is one you entered
Enter at least one ingredient cost and the portions per batch to see a result.
Figures are in whatever currency you entered — the calculator does no conversion. Labour, rent, payment fees and wastage beyond your yield percentage are not included, so treat the margin as a ceiling rather than profit. Nothing you type leaves your browser.
Why yield matters more than operators expect
The single most common error in meal-plan costing is using purchase weight rather than usable weight. A kilogram of chicken breast is not a kilogram of cooked portion: trim, moisture loss and the piece that does not fit the container are all real.
A yield of ninety percent sounds like a rounding detail and moves your food cost by more than eleven percent. Applied across every portion of every batch, it is frequently the difference between the margin an operator believes they have and the one they actually have.
The honest way to find your figure is to weigh it once per major ingredient rather than estimate it. It is an afternoon of work and it is the input this calculation is most sensitive to.
What this deliberately does not include
Labour, rent, utilities, payment processing fees, software, insurance and the founder’s time are all absent. That is intentional rather than an oversight: those are business overheads that a per-portion figure cannot sensibly carry, and folding them in produces a number that feels precise and means nothing.
So treat the margin here as a ceiling. It answers whether a recipe is affordable at your price, not whether your business is profitable. Those are different questions and conflating them is the most common pricing mistake in this industry.
It also does no currency conversion. Whatever unit you type in is the unit that comes out.
What to do with the answer
If a recipe’s fully-loaded cost is close to your price, the problem is rarely that one dish. It is usually that ingredient prices moved and the plan price did not, which is a review cadence problem rather than a menu problem.
Run the calculation again whenever a supplier price changes materially, and keep the figures somewhere you can compare month to month. A single number tells you very little; the trend over six months tells you whether margin is eroding and roughly when it started.
And resist the urge to compare against a benchmark you found online. Your delivery density, portion sizes and supplier terms are specific to you, and a number from an article is not evidence about your business.
Common questions
- Does this include labour and overheads?
- No, deliberately. Labour, rent, payment fees and software are business overheads that a per-portion figure cannot sensibly carry. Treat the margin shown as a ceiling rather than as profit.
- What yield percentage should I use?
- Your own, measured. Weigh a major ingredient before and after preparation once rather than estimating — this is the input the calculation is most sensitive to, and a ten percent error moves food cost by more than eleven percent.
- Is my data stored or sent anywhere?
- No. The arithmetic runs entirely in your browser. Nothing is transmitted, nothing is saved, and closing the tab discards everything you entered.
- What is a good margin for a meal-plan business?
- We will not quote one. We have no defensible industry data, and a benchmark we invented would be worse than none because you would price against it. Your own trend over six months is far more informative.
Costing that stays current on its own
Mealroh derives cost per portion from the same recipe data that drives purchasing, so a supplier price change moves your margin figure without anyone rebuilding a spreadsheet.
Related reading
- SolutionsRecipe costing for meal-plan businessesMost meal-plan operators can tell you their revenue precisely and their food cost approximately. The gap between those two levels of confidence is where the margin quietly goes.
- GuidesPricing mistakes in meal subscriptionsMost meal-plan pricing problems are not about the number chosen. They are about not knowing what a portion actually costs when the number was chosen.
- GuidesRaising prices on an existing meal-plan baseAlmost every meal-plan operator is under-priced relative to their current food cost, and almost all of them delay the correction until it is larger and harder to explain.
- GuidesWhere food waste actually comes from in meal prepMeal-plan kitchens should waste less than almost any other food business, because demand is known before production starts. When they do not, the cause is usually upstream of the kitchen entirely.
- GuidesPackaging decisions that affect the whole operationPackaging is usually chosen on cost and appearance, then quietly constrains shelf life, labelling, stacking, cold chain and the packing bench for the next two years.