Your Supplier Prices Went Up. Did Your Menu Prices?
Chefs: Your Dish Sells for £12.95. But What’s Your Actual GP?
Here’s a question for chefs, head chefs and kitchen managers.
When was the last time you properly re-costed your menu?
We all know how quickly supplier prices change. A few extra pence on chicken, butter, cream or vegetables might not seem much, but across hundreds of portions those increases add up.
Here’s a simple example:
* Selling price: £12.95
* Ingredient cost per portion: £3.20
* Gross profit: £9.75
* Food-cost GP: 75.3%
For simplicity, these illustrative figures use prices on the same VAT basis and exclude labour, utilities and other overheads.
Now imagine your ingredient cost increases to £3.85, but your selling price stays the same.
Your GP drops to 70.3%.
That’s five percentage points lost without changing a single menu price.
I’m Chris, a working chef based in Norfolk. After years of dealing with recipe costing, spreadsheets and supplier invoices, I decided to build something that would make the process easier.
It’s called Mise en Price.
I’ve recently added a free recipe calculator to the website so chefs can test it with their own ingredients, without signing up or entering payment details.
miseenprice.co.uk
But I’m interested in something else too.
How often do you actually re-cost your dishes?
Weekly? Monthly? Every time a supplier increases prices? Or only when you’re writing a new menu?
I’d be interested to hear how other kitchens handle it.
Cheers,
Chris
