1
Ingredient yield
Raw chicken loses 22% on trim, ground beef 28%, romaine 25%. We apply USDA Handbook 102 + CIA Book of Yields tables — cost is computed on usable weight, not purchase weight.
Recipe simulator · Built on Cornell & USDA yield data
Your bestseller might be your
biggest profit leak
1 in 3 menu items lose money — and most owners can not tell which. Build your recipe with real yields, trim loss & overhead in 60 seconds. See which dishes are Stars, which are silently bleeding you, and the exact price that fixes it (Star · Puzzle · Plowhorse · Dog matrix).
⏱️ Answer in 60 seconds
🍳 6 preset recipes to try
📚 8 published sources
⚡ No signup
Cited methodology
How we calculate — and why every number is sourced
2
Hidden overhead (8%)
Oil, salt, spice, marinade, garnish, side bread — the "silent slack". Industry standard 6–12% of base ingredient cost (Dittmer & Keefe). Default 8% — you can override.
3
Per-plate labor cost
Prep minutes × loaded hourly wage (UAE: AED 75, KSA: SAR 70 — weighted kitchen+service rate, 2024 GCC market). Feeds Prime Cost — NRA standard ceiling is 60%.
4
Target food cost %
QSR 25–30%, casual 28–32%, fine dining 30–35%. (Toast 2024, NRA 2024). Golden mark for profitable independents is 28%; chains target 25%.
5
Menu engineering matrix
The Cornell framework by Kasavana & Smith (1982) — classifies dishes by popularity × contribution margin into ⭐ Star · 🧩 Puzzle · 🐎 Plowhorse · 🐕 Dog. Each box has a different operational decision.
6
Inflation pass-through
McKinsey 2023 found restaurants pass ~62% of input inflation to price and absorb ~38% in margin. Our sensitivity slider shows exactly what waiting to reprice costs your bottom line.
Worldwide reference cases
When recipes are costed properly, everything changes
Kasavana & Smith Menu Engineering
The original Cornell study showed re-engineering Stars & Plowhorses lifts profit 7–15% without raising prices. The 2020 replication on 1,200 restaurants confirmed the effect.
Read →2024 Restaurant Trends Report
Across 105,000 restaurants: those who recost recipes weekly out-margin those who recost yearly by 4.2 percentage points. The compounding effect is massive.
Read →The Book of Yields
The global gold standard: 1,000+ ingredients with verified yield ratios. Ignoring yields under-states plate cost by 15–30% — the difference between profit and loss.
Read →Hospitality inflation pass-through
2021–2023: input costs rose 18%, menu prices 9%. Restaurants that re-priced quarterly held their margin; those who waited lost 40% of it.
Read →State of the Industry 2024
Average profit margin only 3–5%. Each 1% drop in food cost = 20–30% lift in net profit. The numbers don't lie — they're just hard to track without a system.
Read →Cost-Margin Method
Pavesic's complement to Kasavana — weights margin by cost instead of percentage. Critical for fine dining where a 35% food cost can be more profitable than 25%.
Read →Questions chefs & owners ask
Everything about recipe costing
Why does plate cost differ from (qty × kg price)?
Because raw ingredient loses weight on trim and cooking. 1 kg raw chicken yields ~780 g edible. Cost of 100 g on the plate = 100/780 × kg price, not 100/1000. This gap silently steals 15–30% of your margin.
Why is there an automatic 8% overhead slack?
Oil, salt, spice, marinade, side bread, garnish — nobody itemizes them per plate. The industry standard is 6–12% (Dittmer & Keefe). We default to 8% — adjustable. Leaving it at zero hides a real cost.
How is the dish classified on the matrix?
Two axes: (1) popularity = covers/day vs. threshold (30/day GCC median), (2) profitability = food cost % vs. your target. High + high = ⭐ Star. Low + low = 🐕 Dog. Framework: Kasavana & Smith (Cornell 1982).
The default prices feel outdated — what do I do?
Every row is editable: kg price, yield %, quantity. The full Polaris pulls prices automatically from your suppliers' invoices daily — here you can sanity-check the logic with your own numbers.
What happens after I submit my email?
Within 60 seconds you get: (1) full PDF of this recipe, (2) your category benchmarks (QSR/casual/fine), (3) top-10 specific quick wins for your restaurant. No cold calls without consent — we respect your time.
Imagine every dish on your menu costed like this — automatically, daily.
Polaris links supplier invoices, recipes, and sales into one dashboard. Plate cost updates the moment an ingredient price moves — before it eats your margin.
✓ No credit card · ✓ ZATCA Phase 2 ready · ✓ 90-day profit promise