Recipe Costing Sheet
Work out what a dish actually costs to make as you make it, including the trimmings, so a price is set from a figure rather than a feeling.
KC-01 1 page
Restaurants and bars · RB-04
Daily Specials Costing Sheet
A free printable specials costing sheet — each day's specials with ingredients per portion, cost, sell price and margin before service, and sold and left after.
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One page. Choose your paper size — both versions are laid out identically, so neither one gets shrunk to fit.
Print it and write on it
Fill it in type and save
The fillable versions have real form fields — open them in any PDF reader, type into them and save. Printing help.
What this sheet is for
Price the specials from their ingredients rather than by guesswork, and see the next morning which ones sold, which were wasted and which are worth running again.
Who it is for
Head chefs, sous chefs and owner-cooks in restaurants, pubs, cafés and bistros that change a specials board daily.
How to use it
- Write the date, service and the stock the specials are meant to use up.
- Put your own target margin in the box at the top, from your own costings.
- List each special with its main ingredients and quantity per portion, then cost it.
- Set the sell price and work out the margin before it goes on the board.
- After service, fill in sold and left, and note whether to run it again.
What is on the sheet
One page, top to bottom:
Printed under the title: The day's specials costed before they are chalked on the board — what goes into each one, what a portion costs, what it will sell for and what the margin comes out at, then how many sold and how many were left. Your prices and your target margin: nothing is suggested.
Cost it before it goes on the board. A special exists to use something up or to try something out, and either way it is the dish most likely to be priced by guesswork at half past ten. Cost it here first. The margin you want is your own figure; write it in the box so the specials can be checked against it.
Write-on lines: Date · Service (lunch / dinner) · Chef · Target margin (your figure) · Stock to use up
Specials
Table, 5 rows: Dish · Main ingredients and quantity per portion · Cost / portion · Sell price · Margin · Prepped · Sold · Left
End of service
Write-on lines: Specials sold (total) · Portions wasted · Left over — kept for · Run again?
Questions
How is this different from the Recipe Costing Sheet?
The recipe sheet costs one dish in full, line by line, for the standing menu. This sheet is a day's worth of specials on one page, costed quickly enough to do before service and closed off after it with the numbers sold and wasted.
Why no target margin printed?
Because the margin a kitchen needs depends on its rent, its staff and its menu, and any figure printed here would be wrong for most of them. Yours goes in the box.
Related sheets
Kitchen Wastage Sheet
Record what gets thrown away and why, which is usually the fastest way to find where a kitchen's margin is going.
KC-05 1 page
Menu Planning Sheet
Plan the prep against the covers you are actually expecting, and settle who is doing what before service rather than during it.
KC-08 1 page
Front of House Table Plan Sheet
Put a whole service's floor on one sheet before the doors open, so the host, the servers and the pass all work from the same plan and change it in the same pen.
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