Written by: JJ Tan, Founder, Jelly

Key Takeaways

  • The free recipe costing spreadsheet template includes five linked tabs: ingredient master list, recipe assembly, waste and yield factors, overheads, and pricing and profit summary.
  • Four core formulas drive accurate costing: ingredient cost, cost per portion, food cost percentage, and target selling price ex-VAT.
  • UK-specific features include VAT-exclusive selling prices, metric pack-price conversion, yield-adjusted costs, and delivery-platform commission as a separate cost line.
  • Setting up the template takes under 30 minutes. Populate the master list from invoices, build one dish, enter yield percentages, add overheads, then review the profit summary.
  • Jelly automates the process by scanning invoices, updating costs in real time, and integrating with POS systems so margins stay current without manual work.

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What A Complete UK Recipe Costing Spreadsheet Template Includes

A complete UK recipe costing spreadsheet template contains five core tabs.

  1. Ingredient Master List. Every ingredient, its supplier, pack size, pack price, and calculated cost per gram or millilitre.
  2. Recipe Assembly Tab. The dish name, each ingredient pulled from the master list, the recipe quantity used, and the auto-calculated ingredient cost.
  3. Waste And Yield Factor. Yield percentage per ingredient, adjusted usable cost per gram, and the impact on total recipe cost.
  4. Overheads. A cost-per-portion allocation for energy, labour, packaging, and delivery-platform commission.
  5. Pricing And Profit Summary. Cost per portion, VAT-exclusive selling price, food cost percentage, and gross profit percentage per dish.

Most UK-focused online recipe costing templates include a VAT-exclusive suggested selling price. They apply the standard VAT rate separately to give the VAT-inclusive menu price. Many templates miss three other UK-specific elements.

The Four Formulas That Make The Template Work

Four formulas power the pricing and profit summary tab. Every cell in that tab traces back to these calculations.

Formula 1: Ingredient Cost

Ingredient cost = pack price ÷ pack quantity × recipe quantity. Pack quantity and recipe quantity must use the same unit.

Formula 2: Cost Per Portion

Cost per portion = total recipe cost ÷ portions.

Formula 3: Food Cost %

Food cost % = cost per portion ÷ selling price ex-VAT × 100.

Formula 4: Target Selling Price Ex-VAT

Target selling price ex-VAT = cost per portion ÷ target food cost %.

Worked Example: Chicken Thigh Main, Serves 4

Start with a 5 kg pack of bone-in chicken thighs priced from your most recent supplier invoice.

  • Pack price ÷ pack quantity = pack price ÷ 5,000g = cost per gram (raw, bone-in).
  • Yield after deboning and trimming is 68%. Usable cost per gram = raw cost per gram ÷ 0.68. Omitting yield systematically understates food cost. This error appears frequently in templates found online.
  • Recipe quantity per portion: enter the trimmed chicken thigh weight from your own recipe specification.
  • Ingredient cost (Formula 1): usable cost per gram × trimmed weight per portion = chicken cost per portion.
  • Add the remaining ingredients (roasted vegetables, sauce, garnish) at their own yield-adjusted costs.
  • Total recipe cost for 4 portions: (chicken cost per portion + other ingredients per portion) × 4.
  • Cost per portion (Formula 2): total recipe cost ÷ 4.
  • Target food cost: 32% (mid-range for a casual dining main).
  • Target selling price ex-VAT (Formula 4): cost per portion ÷ 0.32.
  • VAT-inclusive menu price at the standard rate: ex-VAT price × 1.2, then rounded for menu presentation.
  • Food cost % check (Formula 3): cost per portion ÷ (rounded menu price ÷ 1.2) × 100.

For a deeper walkthrough of building this from scratch in Excel, see How To Build A Recipe Costing Spreadsheet In Excel.

Try The Template With Your Own Dish

With the formulas clear, you can now set up the template step by step.

Setting Up The Template In Under 30 Minutes

Set the template up in five steps. Each step explains the objective, the action, the inputs, and the result you should see.

  1. Populate The Ingredient Master List From Supplier Invoices
    • Objective: Create a single source of truth for every ingredient price.
    • Action: Enter each ingredient name, supplier, pack size (in grams, ml or units), and pack price from your most recent invoice.
    • Inputs Needed: Last two or three supplier invoices.
    • Correct Result: The cost-per-gram column auto-calculates for every row. The ingredient master list tab shows supplier name, pack size in grams, pack price in £, and a calculated £/g column.
  2. Build One Dish In The Recipe Assembly Tab
    • Objective: Pull ingredient costs into a single dish and calculate total recipe cost.
    • Action: Enter the dish name, select each ingredient from the master list dropdown, and enter the recipe quantity in grams.
    • Inputs Needed: A written recipe with gram weights for each ingredient.
    • Correct Result: The ingredient cost column populates automatically and the total recipe cost cell updates. The recipe assembly tab shows dish name, ingredient dropdown, quantity in grams, and auto-calculated cost per ingredient.
  3. Enter Yield And Waste Percentages
    • Objective: Adjust raw ingredient costs to reflect what actually reaches the plate.
    • Action: In the waste and yield factor tab, enter the yield percentage for each ingredient that requires trimming, deboning, or cooking loss (for example 68% for bone-in chicken thigh, 85% for salmon fillet).
    • Inputs Needed: Your kitchen’s own trim tests or standard yield references.
    • Correct Result: The adjusted cost-per-gram in the master list updates. The recipe assembly tab reflects the higher usable cost. The waste and yield factor tab shows ingredient name, raw cost per gram, yield %, and adjusted usable cost per gram.
  4. Add Overheads And Delivery Commission
  5. Read The Pricing And Profit Summary
    • Objective: Confirm food cost percentage and gross profit per dish against your targets.
    • Action: Review the summary tab. Check that selling prices are entered ex-VAT. Under HMRC guidance, food and drink prepared for catering or consumed on premises is standard-rated at the main VAT rate. Divide any VAT-inclusive menu price by 1.2 to get the ex-VAT figure used in all margin calculations.
    • Inputs Needed: Your target food cost % by dish type.
    • Correct Result: Every dish shows a food cost %, a gross profit %, and a VAT-inclusive menu price. The pricing and profit summary tab shows cost per portion, ex-VAT selling price, VAT amount, VAT-inclusive menu price, food cost %, and GP %.

Advanced UK Considerations For Accurate Costing

Metric Pack-Price-To-Per-Gram Conversion

UK supplier invoices usually price by kilogram, litre, or case. The template converts these automatically. Pack price ÷ pack quantity in grams = cost per gram. Recipe quantities then use grams throughout, which removes manual unit conversion errors.

VAT-Exclusive Selling Prices

Calculating food cost against a VAT-inclusive menu price understates food cost percentage by around 14% for standard-rated items. That pattern produces systematically underpriced menus. The template carries both the VAT-inclusive customer-facing price and the VAT-exclusive net price. All food cost and gross profit calculations use the ex-VAT figure. To convert: VAT-inclusive price ÷ 1.2 = ex-VAT price.

Delivery-Platform Commission As A Distinct Cost Line

Platform commission appears as a separate cost line beneath the VAT-exclusive selling price. A 30% commission on a £25 VAT-inclusive order removes £7.50 before food, packaging, or labour are paid. The template includes a delivery commission line in the overheads tab so dine-in and delivery margins stay visible separately.

Handling Supplier Pack-Price Changes

The NIQ and Prestige Purchasing Foodservice Price Index shows that UK hospitality food and drink prices rose 1.8% month-on-month in June 2026. Category-level movements varied sharply. Update the ingredient master list every time a new invoice arrives. A price change in the master list flows automatically to every recipe using that ingredient. This habit keeps the template accurate.

Yield, Waste And Trim

Yield percentage is the proportion of a purchased ingredient that reaches the plate after trimming, deboning, peeling, or cooking loss. A 1 kg chicken breast bought at £6/kg that yields 780g after trimming has a usable cost of £6 ÷ 0.78 = £7.69 per kg. Enter yield as a percentage in the waste and yield factor tab. The template applies it automatically to the cost-per-gram figure in the master list. Costing a recipe on purchase weight rather than usable weight understates dish cost in the same direction every time. Use your kitchen’s own trim tests where possible and re-check whenever a supplier changes the product specification.

For a step-by-step tutorial on building these formulas yourself, see the Recipe Costing Excel Tutorial: Build A Working Spreadsheet.

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Where The Recipe Costing Spreadsheet Template Stops Working Reliably

The template works well for a single-site operator with a stable menu and the discipline to update it on every invoice. It stops working reliably in four situations.

  • Supplier price creep makes the sheet stale as soon as a new invoice lands. Proteins and seafood prices change weekly to bi-weekly, produce weekly, dairy monthly, and dry goods quarterly. A spreadsheet updated monthly already lags for the most volatile categories.
  • Chefs rarely maintain spreadsheets during service. The person who built the file is rarely the person updating it, and version control breaks when multiple people save copies.
  • Costing a single dish manually takes time. On average it takes 28 minutes of work in a spreadsheet to cost a single menu item. That time compounds across a full menu review.
  • Across more than one site, there is no single source of truth. The same dish may be costed differently in two files with no easy way to reconcile them.

Jelly becomes the natural next step once you reach these limits. Jelly scans every invoice line item automatically, updates ingredient costs and dish margins in real time, and integrates with POS systems including Square, EPOS Now, Lightspeed, and Toast so sales mix and gross profit stay live without manual data entry. Onboarding delivers initial value in the first week, and the price is a flat £129 per month per location. For operators who want to understand the software options available, Recipe Costing Software For Restaurants: How To Choose covers the landscape. For operators ready to remove the manual work entirely, How To Calculate Recipe Costs Automatically explains how the invoice-to-dish-costing flow works in practice.

How To Measure Success With Your Template

Beyond the immediate outputs of the template, you can gauge its effectiveness by tracking four outcomes and comparing your food cost percentages against industry benchmarks.

  • Every active menu dish has a completed cost card in the recipe assembly tab.
  • Food cost percentage is visible per dish in the pricing and profit summary, calculated against the VAT-exclusive selling price.
  • Selling prices are set ex-VAT against a target food cost percentage. The VAT-inclusive customer price is derived from that figure rather than set arbitrarily.
  • Delivery menu dishes are costed separately with platform commission included as a cost line, so dine-in and delivery margins stay distinct.

Keep targets directional rather than fixed. UK food cost benchmarks by segment run 25–32% for quick service and cafés, 28–35% for casual dining, 30–38% for gastro pubs, and 32–42% for fine dining. The more useful number is the gap between your theoretical dish cost and your actual food cost at period end. A variance consistently above 3% points to a traceable operational problem. For a broader view of costing methodology, see The Best Way To Calculate Recipe Costing For Chefs.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I Use The Recipe Costing Spreadsheet Template In Google Sheets For Free?

Yes. The template is available in both Excel (.xlsx) and Google Sheets formats at no cost. The Google Sheets version works in any browser without a Microsoft licence. All five tabs — ingredient master list, recipe assembly tab, waste and yield factor, overheads, and pricing and profit summary — function identically in both formats. To use the Google Sheets version, open the shared link, go to File, and select Make A Copy to save it to your own Google Drive.

Does The Template Handle VAT?

Yes. This feature matters for UK operators. The pricing and profit summary tab carries both the VAT-inclusive customer-facing menu price and the VAT-exclusive net price. All food cost percentage and gross profit calculations use the ex-VAT figure. For standard-rated items such as hot food, hot drinks, alcohol, and soft drinks consumed on premises, the VAT rate is 20%. To convert a VAT-inclusive price to ex-VAT, divide by 1.2. The template does this automatically once you enter the VAT-inclusive menu price. Cold takeaway food sold for consumption off the premises is generally zero-rated. The template allows you to set VAT treatment at dish level rather than applying one blanket rate across the menu.

How Do I Cost A Dish With Trim And Waste?

Enter the yield percentage for each ingredient in the waste and yield factor tab. Yield is the proportion of the purchased weight that reaches the plate after trimming, deboning, peeling, or cooking loss. For bone-in chicken thighs, a 68% yield means that for every 100g purchased, 68g is usable. However, this figure reflects cooked yield (USDA cooking-yield data give about 69% for roasted thigh meat and skin, range 58–79%, and 68% for braised), not the raw meat obtained after boning, which is lower at roughly 75–80g of raw meat and skin per 100g bone-in thigh. The template divides the raw cost per gram by the yield percentage to produce an adjusted usable cost per gram. That figure then flows into the recipe assembly tab. Use your kitchen’s own trim tests where possible. Re-check yield figures whenever a supplier changes the product specification, since a different cut or grade can shift yield by several percentage points and materially change dish cost.

How Often Should I Update Supplier Prices?

Update the ingredient master list every time a new invoice arrives. For volatile categories such as proteins, seafood, fresh produce, dairy, and oils, prices can move week to week. For dry goods and packaging, a monthly review usually works. As noted earlier, the 1.8% month-on-month rise in June 2026 highlights the need for frequent updates. A spreadsheet updated quarterly is already significantly out of date for these categories. The practical discipline is to update the master list as part of the invoice-checking process, not as a separate monthly task.

Can I Cost A Delivery Menu Separately?

Yes, and this approach gives a clearer view of margin. The overheads tab includes a delivery commission line so you can model the true contribution of a delivery dish separately from a dine-in dish. Platform commission rates vary by provider and delivery type. Apply the rate from your own platform agreement to the dish’s platform selling price and enter the result as a cost line. VAT-registered operators can reclaim VAT on platform fees, so the net commission is the relevant cost figure for margin calculations. Many operators price delivery menus 10–20% higher than dine-in menus to offset commission. The template lets you model both scenarios side by side.

When Should I Move From A Spreadsheet To Software?

A spreadsheet works well for a single-site operator with a stable menu who updates it consistently on every invoice. The limits appear when supplier price changes arrive faster than the sheet can be maintained, when more than one person needs to edit it, when the menu runs across more than one site, or when the time spent maintaining the sheet exceeds the value it returns. At that point, a platform that scans invoices automatically, updates ingredient costs in real time, and connects to a POS system removes the manual work and keeps dish margins current without a weekly admin session.

Conclusion: Download The Template, Then Automate The Manual Work

The recipe costing spreadsheet template gives UK operators a working file tonight. It includes five tabs, four formulas, and the UK conventions such as VAT-exclusive selling prices, metric pack conversion, yield-adjusted ingredient costs, and delivery commission as a distinct cost line. Populate the ingredient master list from your invoices, build one dish in the recipe assembly tab, apply yield percentages, add overheads and delivery commission, and the pricing and profit summary shows your food cost percentage and gross profit per dish.

When supplier price changes arrive faster than the sheet can be maintained, Jelly automates the invoice-to-dish-costing flow. Every invoice line item is scanned automatically, ingredient costs update in real time, and dish margins stay live without manual data entry.

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