Free Food Cost Card Calculator
Cost every ingredient after prep and cooking loss, and get the cost per serving and per kg, plus calories and macros. Worked example: churros with dulce de leche.
New in FoodTech.Guru · Restaurant business plan generator
Your food business plan. Cooked in 1 minute.
Answer six friendly questions in the app. Get back a live Google Sheet — break-even, 12-month cash flow, cost cards and startup budget — built from your own recipes, not from guesses.
- 7 sheet tabs
- 1,800+ live formulas
- ~1 min to generate
Start with the foundation
You need to calculate your business before you build it.
A proper food business plan starts with two things: accurate Food Cost Cards and proper Menu Engineering. Normally, both require separate spreadsheets that you need to build or buy, then fill in manually with your own data. But these two calculations form the foundation of your entire business plan.
You can get both Google Sheets templates for free here:
Free Menu Engineering Spreadsheet
A nine-dish Mexican menu with every cost card inside: food cost %, menu mix and profit per dish, graded Star, Plowhorse, Puzzle or Dog, plus nutrition and a purchase list.
How it works
Six simple questions to start your plan cooking.
Tap any step to watch it on the phone. Every step feeds a real tab in your Google Sheet.
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Pick the closest format — food truck, café, restaurant, bakery, ghost kitchen or catering — and how many days a week you'll trade. It only shapes the suggestions; you can change every number.
Feeds Controls
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Build your opening crew by role — owner, cook, prep, service, driver, manager — then tune hours per week, hourly pay and employer costs. Leave pay at zero for an unpaid role.
Feeds ControlsCash Flow
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Choose the menu this plan will sell. Food costs come straight from its recipe cost cards and stay read-only; you set prices and how many of each dish you expect to sell a month.
Feeds Menu EngineeringCost CardsPurchase List
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The costs that keep the doors open whatever you sell: rent or pitch, utilities or fuel, insurance, marketing, software, repairs and professional fees.
Feeds ControlsUnit Economics
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Start from an editable equipment and opening-setup list for your format. Adjust quantities and prices, remove what you already own, add anything missing.
Feeds Startup CostsCash Flow
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Your economics on one screen: break-even portions per day, revenue, profit, food, labour and fixed costs. Slide selling prices and sales volume to stress-test the plan.
Feeds Unit Economics
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One tap on Generate Business Plan Google Sheet. It costs every dish, works out your monthly numbers and projects twelve months of cash flow — about a minute, and you can leave the screen.
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A live formula workbook in your Google Drive. Change a yellow input and break-even, profit and cash flow follow. Open it, share it with your bank, or keep editing in the app.
All 7 tabs
Rent / pitch
Utilities / fuel
Insurance
Marketing
Repairs & maintenance
Software / POS
Six starting points
Pick a format. Get a head start.
Each format pre-fills a realistic crew, monthly base and equipment list, so your first plan appears in minutes. Every figure is a suggestion in your currency — change anything.
Food truck business plan
Mobile, lean and full of personality.
- Trading days
- 5 / week
- Starting crew
- 3 people
- Monthly base
- $1,750
- Equipment list
- 13 items · $67,650
Café business plan
Coffee, bites and loyal regulars.
- Trading days
- 6 / week
- Starting crew
- 5 people
- Monthly base
- $3,470
- Equipment list
- 13 items · $36,300
Restaurant business plan
A complete dine-in experience.
- Trading days
- 6 / week
- Starting crew
- 8 people
- Monthly base
- $7,300
- Equipment list
- 14 items · $48,150
Bakery business plan
Fresh batches and counter sales.
- Trading days
- 6 / week
- Starting crew
- 4 people
- Monthly base
- $3,320
- Equipment list
- 13 items · $36,700
Ghost kitchen business plan
Delivery-first and highly focused.
- Trading days
- 6 / week
- Starting crew
- 5 people
- Monthly base
- $3,050
- Equipment list
- 14 items · $42,950
Catering business plan
Events, groups and planned production.
- Trading days
- 4 / week
- Starting crew
- 6 people
- Monthly base
- $2,650
- Equipment list
- 12 items · $54,700
What lands in your Google Drive
Seven tabs. 1,826 live formulas. Zero blank cells to fill.
Not a PDF that goes stale. The plan is a working spreadsheet model — yellow cells are your inputs, everything else is a formula. Change a price, and break-even, profit and cash flow follow.
- 1
Controls
Every setting in one place: format, currency, venues, trading days, crew, monthly base, delivery channels, targets.
- 2
Unit Economics
One steady month, per venue and for all venues. Profit, prime cost, break-even, payback and a health check with what to fix.
- 3
Cash Flow
Twelve months with a growth multiplier, staged venues, CAPEX and funding — and the lowest cash point you must survive.
- 4
Menu Engineering
The same columns as the app's menu calculation. Every dish classed Star, Plowhorse, Puzzle or Dog by margin and popularity.
- 5
Cost Cards
Every dish's cost card on one tab — ingredients, gross weights, prep and cooking loss, cost per portion.
- 6
Purchase List
Your buying list, aggregated across the menu in gross weight and grouped by category — with an integrity check against the menu.
- 7
Startup Costs
One-off money with estimated, actual and variance columns, plus how it's funded: owner cash, loans, investors.
Try the numbers
Twelve months, before you sign a lease.
- Month 1. The truck, the griddle, the opening stock — the opening investment lands and cash drops to its low point.
- Months 2–6. Sales ramp up. Every portion above break-even pays back a little more.
- Payback. The line crosses zero — the month your opening investment is earned back.
- Monthly profit at full speed
- $8,420
- Break-even
- 42 / day
- Payback
- Month 11
Worked example: a food truck with the app's starting crew, monthly base and equipment list, an average plate of $11.97 at 30% food cost and about 90 portions a day at full speed, ramping up over the first six months. Your plan uses your own recipes.
See the whole thing
From an empty idea to a Google Sheet in one sitting.
Watch a full walkthrough: choosing a format, building a crew, picking a costed menu, and opening the finished workbook.
Free templates, a finished example, or your own plan?
Free download
Cost card & menu engineering templates
Two Google Sheets templates built for the food industry: a Food Cost Card Calculator and a Menu Engineering Spreadsheet. Your own copy, fully editable.
- Editor access: make a copy and change anything
- You type in your own ingredients, prices and sales
- No app needed
See an example
Ready-made business plan
A complete business plan generated by the app for a Mexican food truck. View-only, with the formulas hidden: you see every tab and every number, exactly as yours would look.
- All seven tabs, filled in
- View only, formulas hidden
- Shows what the generator hands you
In the app
Business plan generator
Six simple questions in FoodTech.Guru, then a live Google Sheet built for you in about a minute from your costed recipes and menu.
- Food costs pulled from your real cost cards
- Crew, costs and equipment pre-filled per format
- Live formulas: break-even and cash flow ready to share
Questions, answered
What is in the generated business plan?
A Google Sheet with seven tabs: Controls, Unit Economics, Cash Flow (12 months), Menu Engineering, Cost Cards, Purchase List and Startup Costs. It is a live formula model with more than 1,800 formulas, so changing an input updates break-even, profit and cash flow.
Which kinds of food business does it support?
Food trucks, cafés, restaurants, bakeries, ghost kitchens and catering. The format only shapes the starting suggestions for crew, monthly costs and equipment; every number stays editable.
Where do the food costs come from?
From the recipe cost cards of the menu you choose in the app. Each dish in the plan carries its own cost card, and the Purchase List totals ingredients across the whole menu.
Can I edit the Google Sheet after it is generated?
Yes. Yellow cells are inputs you can overwrite; grey cells are formulas. The sheet is yours in Google Drive, and you can download it as Excel from Google Sheets.
How long does generation take?
About a minute. You can leave the screen while it runs; the finished sheet appears in My Business Plans.
Are the food cost card and menu engineering templates free?
Yes. Leave your email and you get both Google Sheets templates, a Food Cost Card Calculator and a Menu Engineering Spreadsheet, as your own editable copies. The ready-made business plan example is view-only with the formulas hidden; to get a live plan of your own, generate it in the app.
Can I plan more than one location?
Yes. The Controls tab has a number-of-venues setting, and Unit Economics shows one venue and all venues side by side. The Cash Flow tab lets you stage a rollout month by month.
Stop guessing.
Start the plan.
Your recipes, your crew, your costs — one Google Sheet you can take to the bank.
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