Recipe costing software
Recipe costing software that pays for itself in one menu fix.
Stop guessing your margins. DishCost calculates your food cost percentage on every recipe and recalculates when ingredient prices change. Set up in 60 seconds. $39/mo. Cancel anytime.
The problem
You're tracking food cost in your head. Or not at all.
Most independent restaurants know food cost matters but don't have a good way to track it. The tools that exist are built for chains with IT departments.
Spreadsheets break the second something changes.
Your supplier raises the price of beef by 8%. Now you need to find every formula in every sheet that references beef and update them manually. Miss one and your margin numbers are wrong.
I tried to cancel and they wanted 60-day notice.
Annual contracts, setup fees, 60-day cancellation windows. DishCost is month-to-month. Cancel from your settings in 30 seconds.
Setup took 3 weeks and I still didn't understand it.
You run a kitchen, not an IT department. You need to enter a recipe, see your food cost %, and get back to work. Not sit through onboarding calls.
Features
What you actually need from recipe costing software.
Seven features. That's the whole product.
Recipe builder with instant costing
Add ingredients, set quantities, and see your total recipe cost and cost per serving as you build. No formulas. No copy-pasting between sheets.
Automatic food cost %
Set your menu price and DishCost shows your food cost percentage. Color-coded: green means healthy, amber means watch it, red means you're losing money. Or work it backwards — set a target food cost % and see the menu price you need to hit it.
Price change updates
When your supplier raises the price of chicken thighs, every recipe using chicken thighs recalculates automatically. You see which dishes got more expensive and by how much.
Full menu overview
See every recipe ranked by food cost %. A distribution bar shows how many dishes are healthy, how many need attention, and which ones are costing you money.
Prep items & sub-recipes
Define sauces, doughs, and stocks once. Use them as ingredients in other recipes. Change the price of tomatoes and every dish using your marinara updates automatically.
Recipe scaling
Scale any recipe up or down. Catering an event for 50? Adjust the servings and see updated costs and quantities for every ingredient.
Menu engineering
Auto-categorize every dish as a Star, Plowhorse, Puzzle, or Dog based on contribution margin and popularity. See exactly which dishes to promote, reprice, or cut.
Bulk CSV import
Already tracking ingredients in a spreadsheet? Upload a CSV and they all come in at once. Works for new ingredients and price updates. Download the template to get the format right.
How it works
Three steps. Sixty seconds.
01
Add your ingredients
Enter each ingredient with its price per unit — or upload a CSV to import your whole list at once. Chicken thighs at $3.40/lb, olive oil at $0.12/oz, kosher salt at $0.02/oz.
02
Build your recipes
Combine ingredients with quantities per serving. DishCost calculates your total cost and cost per serving as you go.
03
See your food cost %
Set your menu price. DishCost shows your food cost percentage right there. Target 28-32% for most dishes.
Compare
How DishCost stacks up.
Same recipe costing. $39/mo instead of $199.
Pricing
Simple, honest pricing
Less than the cost of one mispriced dish per month. No setup fee. No annual contracts. Cancel anytime from your settings.
For operators who want every dish accounted for.
- Unlimited recipes
- Menu engineering matrix
- Cost change alerts
- PDF & CSV export
- Menu cost dashboard
- Priority support
Less than the cost of one mispriced dish per month.
No setup fee. No annual contracts. Cancel anytime.
Not ready to commit? Try the free calculator — no account needed.
Your food cost won't calculate itself.
You already suspect some dishes are costing more than they should. DishCost tells you exactly which ones and by how much. Enter your first recipe in 60 seconds.