Food truck menu pricing calculator
Get a suggested menu price, then enter prepped, sold, comped and wasted portions to see your food cost and margin after service. You can also model a side separately.
No signup, no email, no card. Nothing you type here leaves your browser.
Waste-adjusted food cost calculator
Enter one item's service totals. Count paid sales, free comps, and discarded portions separately. Usable leftovers saved for later are not waste.
Uses the ingredient cost and suggested price above, for the entree only. The side model is separate.
- Theoretical margin
- 70.0%
- Waste-adjusted margin
- 59.1%
- Waste-adjusted food cost
- 40.9%
- Food-cost margin ($)
- $216.67
Sales: $366.67 · Ingredients consumed: $150.00 · Usable leftovers: 0 portions.
Food cost = (sold + comped + wasted) × ingredient cost. Revenue = sold × selling price. Assumes paid portions sell at full price; excludes tax, labor, fuel, event fees, processing, and other overhead. This is food-cost margin, not take-home profit.
The suggested price is theoretical: ingredient cost divided by your target. The service calculator above shows how recorded waste and comps change the margin at that price. GriddleMath tracks the waste-adjusted margin for every item automatically from your Square sales and closeout, so you know what a dish actually made — not just what it should have made.
Turn this estimate into your real numbers
Connect Square and GriddleMath imports what actually sold, matches it to your recipe costs, and replaces every guess above — attach rate, waste, sellouts — with what happened at your last booking.
Connect Square and import my salesFree to start · no credit card · no sales call. Or read how the Square import works first.A taco truck and a BBQ truck should not price to the same number
“Target 30%” is the advice everybody gives, and it is wrong for most of the menu. Protein-heavy concepts carry a structurally higher food cost; drinks and fried sides carry a much lower one. These are the ranges the calculator starts you in:
| Concept | Typical food cost | What drives it |
|---|---|---|
| Tacos & handhelds | 28%–32% | Portion-controlled protein on a cheap carrier. Margin lives or dies on how tightly the meat is scooped. |
| BBQ & smoked meats | 32%–38% | Protein-heavy and yield-sensitive — a brisket losing 40% to cook shrink is the real cost, not the raw price per pound. |
| Burgers & sandwiches | 28%–33% | Predictable per-unit cost. Toppings and premium buns are what quietly push these past target. |
| Pizza & flatbread | 20%–28% | Flour, sauce and cheese are cheap per portion, so the band runs lean — but only if the cheese is weighed. |
| Loaded fries & sides | 20%–26% | The cheapest thing on most trucks to produce, and the best side to attach to an entree. |
| Coffee & cold drinks | 12%–20% | The leanest category on the truck. Canned and bottled drinks run higher than anything you pour yourself. |
| Desserts & sweets | 18%–25% | Low ingredient cost, high labor. Worth attaching rather than relying on as a destination item. |
Where these came from, honestly: these are conventional industry starting ranges — the numbers operators and consultants generally work from. They are not the result of a survey we ran, and we are not going to present them as one. They are here to get you off a blank field. The band that actually matters is your own, and you only get that by measuring what your truck sold and wasted.
Pricing by food cost % keeps your margin consistent
Guessing a price and hoping it covers your costs is how margin quietly disappears. Food cost percentage pricing works backwards from what a dish actually costs to make, so every item on your menu is priced to hit the same target margin before recorded waste and comps reduce it.
The math above is the same theoretical-margin formula GriddleMath uses under the hood. The difference is that GriddleMath keeps recalculating it automatically as your ingredient costs change, and then adds recorded waste and comps from each booking to show your real waste-adjusted margin per item. Early sellouts inform future prep; hypothetical missed sales are not deducted.
Want the same math applied to your whole menu, tied to your Square sales? See how menu costing works, cost your recipes, or connect your Square account.
Menu pricing FAQ
What food cost % should a food truck target?
Most food trucks target a 28–33% food cost, meaning ingredients make up 28–33 cents of every dollar of menu price. Lean categories like drinks, pizza and loaded fries usually run below that; protein-heavy concepts like BBQ often run above it. The concept presets in the calculator start you inside the usual band for your kind of truck.
Where do the concept bands come from?
They are conventional industry starting ranges, not measured results — we have not surveyed trucks to produce them, and we would rather say so than dress them up as research. Use them to get off a blank field, then replace them with your own numbers: once GriddleMath has a few closeouts from your truck, your actual food cost by item is the only band that matters.
What is the side attach (combo) model for?
An entree priced at target and a lean side attached to some share of your tickets produce a blended food cost lower than the entree alone. The calculator models this over 100 tickets: every ticket gets the entree, and your attach rate decides how many also get the side. Attach rate is the one input here your POS already knows — GriddleMath reads it from your Square sales rather than asking you to guess.
Is this the price I'll actually collect?
The suggested price assumes full-price sales with no waste or comps. Enter your service quantities to see waste-adjusted food cost and margin at that price. Usable leftovers are not charged as waste. With no paid sales, percentages are undefined, but ingredient costs still appear. The optional side model remains a separate theoretical estimate.
How is the suggested price calculated?
Suggested price = ingredient cost ÷ target food cost %. If a bowl costs $3.00 to make and your target food cost is 30%, the suggested price is $3.00 ÷ 0.30 = $10.00.
Do I have to give you my email to use this?
No. The calculator is free, runs entirely in your browser, and asks for nothing — no email, no account, no card. Signing up for GriddleMath is a separate choice you make only if you want your real numbers tracked over time.