Enter your food cost and your sales for the same period, and get your food cost percentage instantly — plus your gross margin and how far you are from your target.
Great for a one-off check. But if you'd rather not run this math by hand every time prices move, Lowboy keeps it current in the background — so your hours go to the food, not the spreadsheet.
Use a full period (a week or a month) for your overall number, or a single item's cost and price to check one dish.
Food cost percentage is the share of your sales that goes to the food you bought to make them. The formula is simple:
If you spent $18,240 on food and sold $58,100 over the same period, that's 18,240 ÷ 58,100 = 31.4%. Everything left over — 68.6% here — is your gross margin, the money that covers labor, rent, and profit.
Most full-service kitchens aim for 28–35%, with 30% a common target. The vs. target readout shows how many percentage points you're over or under. One point over on $58K in sales is roughly $580 you didn't need to spend — the reason a single point matters so much.
A calculator is only as honest as the figures you put in it — and the number in your head is usually last month's. Lowboy is the sous-chef for the back of house: snap the invoices and sales you already handle, and it computes your real food cost percentage from your actual purchases, then keeps it current on its own. Same paper you already touch — turned into live, actionable numbers that save you money and time, without changing your workflow.
Lowboy is $149/mo or $1,490/yr (two months free), with a 30-day money-back guarantee. The audit below is free and shows your number first.
Snap a menu and a few invoices. No login, no card. About 3 minutes.
Do the math: a kitchen spending about $50,000 a month on food that trims that by just 1% saves roughly $500 a month — about 3.4× the $149 plan. One caught price hike or one re-priced dish usually clears it.
Add the hours back, too — no spreadsheet nights, no manual invoice entry, no rebuilding the prep list when the menu changes.
Less time on the back office, more time on the food, your crew, and the reason you opened.
Get your free audit →