How to calculate cost per portion

Salmon poke bowl, $16.50 on the menu. Looks healthy, looks expensive to make, and most kitchens cost this one wrong. They get it wrong on the very first line.

Five things go in. 120 grams of salmon. Hold that one, we are coming back to it. 60 grams of dry sushi rice at $3 a kilo, 18 cents. 30 mils of poke sauce from a house batch, and that batch works out at $6 a liter, so another 18 cents. Avocado, edamame, cucumber, and nori, $1.37. And the bowl, the lid, the chopsticks, 55 cents. That leaves with the customer, so it counts.

Now the salmon. Your invoice says $21 a kilo, so 120 grams costs $2.52, right? No, because you do not serve the whole kilo. Skin, pin bones, bloodline, the thin end of the belly. Trim a side down to clean cube, and you keep about 700 grams, a 70% yield. So the fish that actually reaches a bowl costs you $30 a kilo, not 21. Your portion is $3.60. That is $1.08 a bowl, 60 bowls a day. And there is $23,000 a year you thought you had.

So add it up, $5.88. Against $16.50, that is a 35.6% food cost, and $10.62 of gross profit on every bowl.

Here is the part that should worry you. Salmon is 61% of this bowl, so the bowl does not really have a food cost. The salmon does. Your supplier puts fish up $3.50 a kilo. That happens. You are at 39.3%, or nobody touches the price, and the scoop just drifts. 135 grams instead of 120. Nobody can see 15 grams. 38.4. Either one puts you in the red.

So is 35.6 good? For a grain or salad bowl, you are aiming at 28 to 33. So, no. And here is the thing. Cost that salmon straight off the invoice, and this bowl reads 29.1, on target. Same bowl. The only difference is whether you counted the trim. Then there is delivery. The platform takes 30% and you buy the bag. $10.62 dine-in becomes $5.02. Less than half for an identical bowl.

Cost yours the same way. It's free, no card, dishboard.co. And if you want more of these, subscribe.