Price one dish — or a whole menu — from real food cost, not guesswork.
MenuPriceCalc helps restaurant, cafe, and food-truck owners convert ingredient cost per portion into a recommended selling price using the familiar food-cost-percentage framework. It is especially useful when a new operator is building a first menu and does not want one badly priced sandwich quietly draining profit.
Calculate a menu item
Enter the cost to make one sellable portion, choose a target food-cost percentage, and compare the recommendation with a competitor or existing menu price.
Cost vs margin breakdown
Build a full menu price ladder
Add multiple dishes to see whether the overall menu feels coherent instead of a random collection of prices.
Food-service pricing has its own language.
A new cafe owner can easily copy a nearby competitor's price or pick a number that “sounds right.” The problem is that restaurants usually think in food-cost percentage: if a sandwich costs 6.00 to make and the target is 30%, the menu price needs to be about 20.00 before labor, rent, utilities, taxes, marketing, and profit can be covered. This tool turns that convention into a fast, visible workflow.
The core competition is usually locked inside POS or restaurant-management software. MenuPriceCalc is differentiated by being free, standalone, and accessible before a small operator is ready to pay for a full restaurant SaaS stack.
The main risk is audience size: restaurant and food-service owners are a narrower group than all small businesses. The upside is that this specificity is what makes the calculator genuinely useful inside restaurant-owner groups, cafe forums, and first-menu planning workflows.