Australian benchmarks
These are working bands, not targets. The more useful question is rarely “is this dish at 31%?” but “what cash gross profit does this dish return, and how often does it sell?” A high-percentage dish that returns twenty-two dollars and moves forty times a week beats a virtuous one returning nine.
A worked example
Take a plate of pasta alla Norma on the menu at $28. Eggplant, tomato, ricotta salata, pasta, oil and basil come to $6.40 a serve at current supplier prices — assuming you have actually weighed the yield after trimming the eggplant, not estimated it from the invoice.
Strip the GST first: $28 ÷ 1.1 = $25.45 ex-GST. Food cost is $6.40 ÷ $25.45 = 25.1%. Gross profit is $19.05 a plate. That is a comfortable number for a pasta-led venue.
Now the part the percentage hides. If that dish takes eleven minutes of a chef's hands to fire and plate, and the eggplant is fried to order rather than prepped in service-ready batches, the labour attached to it can quietly remove several dollars of that gross profit. The costing sheet says the dish is healthy; the roster says otherwise.
That gap — between what a dish costs on paper and what it costs to actually get out of the pass — is where most menu work happens.
Common questions
What is a good food cost percentage in Australia?
For most Australian restaurants, 28–35% of the ex-GST menu price is the normal band. Cafés running a smaller menu often sit lower, around 25–30%. Venues built around premium protein or seafood commonly run higher and make it back on volume or on beverage margin. A number outside that band is not automatically wrong — but it is worth being able to explain.
How do I calculate food cost percentage?
Divide the total ingredient cost of the dish by the ex-GST selling price, then multiply by 100. In Australia menu prices are quoted GST-inclusive, so divide the menu price by 1.1 before you do the division — skipping that step flatters the number by about ten percent.
Does this include labour?
No. This is plate cost only. Labour, wastage, energy and rent all have to come out of the gross profit the calculator shows. A dish with a healthy food cost percentage can still lose money if it takes fifteen minutes of a chef's time to assemble.
Should I price every dish to the same percentage?
No, and it is one of the most common mistakes. What matters is the cash gross profit per dish weighted by how often each one sells — a dish at 40% food cost that returns $22 and sells constantly is worth more than one at 22% returning $9. Costing tells you the number; menu engineering tells you what to do about it.