Plan portions, ingredient quantities and recipe costs as separate steps. Use a measured recipe yield and your own purchase prices for meals, dawat orders and small food businesses.
Available here: planning methods and worked examples. Interactive calculators for this topic are not yet available. Use your own measurements and current quotations; all example prices are fictional.
Scale a tested recipe by servings
Start with a recipe you have already prepared and measured. Record its actual usable servings, then scale each ingredient by the same factor. Raw ingredient mass and cooked serving mass are different measurements; water uptake, trimming and cooking loss vary by recipe.
Worksheet: Scale factor = required servings ÷ measured recipe servings.
Example: scale a tested recipe by servings
A tested 8-serving recipe scaled to 20 servings has a factor of 2.5. An ingredient used at 400 g becomes 1,000 g. This does not establish a universally suitable portion.
Separate batch cost from selling price
Cost only the ingredient quantity used in the batch, even if you buy a larger pack. Add packaging, paid labour and the overhead allocated to that batch. Count saleable portions after measured preparation losses.
Worksheet: Cost per saleable portion = total included batch costs ÷ saleable portions.
Example: separate batch cost from selling price
A batch costing PKR 3,000 and producing 20 saleable portions costs PKR 150 per portion. Selling at PKR 200 leaves PKR 50 contribution per portion before any costs omitted from the batch.
Prepare your inputs before comparing results
- Choose one task and one planning period.
- Record the measurement units and the source and date of each quotation.
- Separate quantities used, quantities purchased and any remainder.
- List costs included in the estimate and costs excluded from it.
- Recheck the result when quantities, prices or circumstances change.
Related planning guides
Use business planning for cash collection, shared overhead and contribution across several products. Read business planning, or browse all calculator topics.
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