The file is here to download, free, no sign-up, and it answers one question: are your dishes making money? Seven tabs, no macros. You weigh your recipes once, you type in the day’s sales, and the file gives you each dish’s cost, your overall food cost, and above all the gap between the stock your recipes say you should have and the stock the kitchen actually has. On the three example days shipped with it: 11 622 MAD of revenue, 28.7% food cost, and 130 MAD gone with no explanation.
In short
- Download the file (.xlsx, opens in Excel, LibreOffice, Google Sheets and Numbers).
- Seven tabs: how to use, ingredients, recipe cards, dishes, sales, purchases, dashboard.
- The recipe card does all the work. One line per ingredient per dish, with the quantity for one portion.
- In the example the beef burger runs at 44.5% food cost while the chips run at 16.2%. The dish you think feeds you does not.
- Theoretical against counted stock is the line that pays for the file: it is waste, over-portioning or loss, in dirhams.
The seven tabs, and which one demands care
Six tabs fill in ten minutes. The seventh, the recipe cards, needs a set of scales and an evening. It is the one that decides whether the rest of the file is telling the truth.
| Tab | What it is for | What you type in |
|---|---|---|
| Ingredients | The purchase price of each raw material, per unit. | Ref, name, unit, price, opening stock, threshold. |
| Recipe cards | Each dish’s recipe, line by line. | Dish, ingredient, quantity for one portion. |
| Dishes | The menu price. Cost and margin are computed. | Code, name, sale price. |
| Sales | Portions served, per day and per dish. | One line per day per dish. |
| Purchases | What comes into the kitchen. | One line per delivery received. |
| Counted | A column on the Ingredients tab. | What the store room actually holds, counted. |
| Dashboard | Eight numbers read from the other tabs. | Nothing. |
The example shipped with the file is a snack bar: twelve ingredients, five dishes, three days of service, 494 portions. The prices are illustrative and exist to show the formulas working. Type over them, or delete the lines.
What a dish costs, and the dish that fools you
A dish’s food cost is the sum of its recipe lines, each quantity multiplied by the ingredient’s purchase price. The file does it for you. Here is what it produces on the five example dishes.
| Dish | Menu price | Food cost | Food cost % | Margin per portion | Portions sold |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken tacos | 35 | 9.88 | 28.2 % | 25.12 | 125 |
| Beef burger | 30 | 13.36 | 44.5 % | 16.64 | 85 |
| Cheese panini | 22 | 5.15 | 23.4 % | 16.85 | 47 |
| Chips | 12 | 1.94 | 16.2 % | 10.05 | 174 |
| Chicken sandwich | 25 | 6.12 | 24.5 % | 18.88 | 63 |
Read the percentage column, not the price column. The beef burger sells at 30 MAD and leaves 16.64 MAD: it is the most expensive item on the menu and the least profitable in proportion, at 44.5%, because the minced beef costs more than everything else put together. The chips, at 12 MAD, leave only 10.05 MAD a portion, but at 16.2% food cost and 174 portions in three days they earn more than anything else on that menu.
That is why this file exists. Without it the decision gets made on the displayed price, and instinct is wrong almost always in the same direction: the expensive dish gets pushed, the side gets ignored, and the month’s margin does not follow the month’s revenue. Our article on food cost sets out the method behind the column; this file only keeps it up to date.
Getting it running on a Sunday afternoon
Allow two hours for a ten-dish menu, and do it in this order.
- Download the file and save a copy under your business’s name.
- Enter your ingredients with the purchase price in the base unit: the kilo, the litre, the piece. If you buy meat by the kilo, everything about it will be in kilos, recipes included.
- Weigh. Take the scales, make a dish the way you actually make it, and write down every quantity. This is the step nobody does and the only one that counts: a recipe card estimated by eye gives a wrong food cost, and a wrong food cost is worse than none.
- Put in the menu prices on the Dishes tab. Cost, food cost and margin appear on their own.
- Enter a week of sales, one total per day per dish. The evening’s till roll is enough, or your software’s report if you have one.
- Count the store room that same evening and fill in the Counted column. This is where the file starts teaching you something.
- Count again every week, on the same day. One isolated gap means nothing; three weeks of gaps on the same ingredient point at something specific.
One technical constraint in the whole file: the ingredient reference must be spelled identically on the recipe cards and in the purchases. IN-03 and IN03 are two different ingredients as far as the calculation is concerned, and it will say nothing and find nothing.
What this file does not do
It does not take orders, it does not deduct stock at the moment of sale, and it cannot be open to two people at once. In practice somebody has to type in the day’s sales every evening, and the day that stops happening the file becomes wrong without warning. That is exactly the point at which a till that records sales by itself stops being a luxury.
Theoretical against counted: the line that pays for the file
Your recipes know what you should have used. The file works it out: for each ingredient, the quantity per portion multiplied by the portions sold. Compare that with what the store room really holds and you get a number that nobody in Moroccan catering ever looks at.
On the three example days, the count finds three ingredients below theory: minced beef (-1.15 kg), grated cheese (-0.43 kg) and potato (-2.25 kg). You do not correct the stock in the file; you go looking for the cause on those three lines.
A ladle instead of a spoon, a bag missed at goods-in, a portion of sauce served by hand: our eight methods for cutting restaurant stock loss take each cause with its remedy. Three ways to read the number, in order:
- What the gap is not: an error in the file. If the recipe cards are right and the purchases are entered, the gap is real.
- What it is, in order of frequency: over-portioning in preparation, waste and trimmings, receiving errors, undeclared staff meals, and outright loss.
- What it is worth here: 130 MAD in three days, so on the order of 1 300 MAD a month if the rate holds. Against a gross margin of 8 286 MAD over the period, that shows.
What the dashboard shows, on the example
Nothing to type on this tab: it reads the other six. Here is what it shows when the file opens.
| The number | On the three example days | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 11 622 MAD | 494 portions served, all dishes together. |
| Food cost | 3 336 MAD | What the kitchen consumed to produce that revenue. |
| Overall food cost | 28.7% | To compare with your own weeks, not with a norm found online. |
| Gross margin | 8 286 MAD | Before rent, wages, electricity and gas. |
| Ingredients below threshold | 1 | Here the flour: 5.3 kg against a 10 kg threshold. |
| Stock gap, in value | -130 MAD | The one line on the dashboard that names a problem to solve tonight. |
Mistakes to avoid
- Estimating quantities instead of weighing them. A recipe card that is 20% wrong makes the whole file decorative.
- Forgetting the oil, the bread, the sauce and the packaging. Those are the lines that take a dish from 25 to 35% food cost.
- Entering sales dish by dish, receipt by receipt. One total per day per dish is enough, and it survives.
- Correcting theoretical stock to erase the gap. The gap is the information; erasing it throws away the only thing this file gives you.
- Waiting three months to count the store room. A weekly count of ten ingredients beats a full inventory once a quarter.
Frequently asked questions
Is this Excel restaurant template free?
Yes, with no sign-up. It is an .xlsx file with no macros, and it opens in Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Numbers and Google Sheets. You can change it and use it as your own.
How do you calculate a dish’s cost in Excel?
By adding up its recipe lines: for each ingredient, the quantity for one portion multiplied by its unit purchase price. In the file that sum is a SUMIF against the recipe cards tab. In the shipped example the beef burger costs 13.36 MAD against a 30 MAD menu price.
What food cost should a Moroccan snack bar aim for?
We publish no norm, because none is verifiable from one business to the next: the menu, the volumes and the purchase prices change everything. The useful figure is your own, tracked week by week. What matters is which way the line is going, and which dish is pulling it.
Do I have to enter every receipt on the Sales tab?
No. One line per day per dish is enough, with the number of portions. If you have POS software, take the total from the closing report; it is two minutes in the evening.
Does the file handle drinks and set menus?
Drinks resold as they are behave like a dish with a single recipe line. A set menu is entered as a dish whose recipe repeats its components’ lines: that is the only way to know its real food cost.
When should you move to POS software?
The day the evening data entry stops happening, or as soon as it takes two people to keep the file. A till records sales without anyone copying them, and produces the same food cost without waiting for Sunday.
What to take away
A spreadsheet does not replace a till, but it answers the question no till asks on its own: how much is left, dish by dish, once the food is paid for. Weigh your recipes once, type your sales in every evening, count the store room every week, and within three weeks you will know which dish feeds you and which ingredient evaporates. That is all this file promises, and it is already more than most kitchens know about themselves.
The file tonight, the till when the typing falls behind
The template is free and needs no sign-up. When the evening data entry becomes the weak link, BelloPOS records sales as they happen, keeps ingredient stock, and produces the same numbers with no copying. Lite licence free for life, entirely offline.
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