How to Calculate Food Cost for a Food Truck: Formulas, Yield and a Worked Example (2026)

To calculate food cost, add up what one portion's ingredients cost and divide by the menu price. That is the plate cost method. For a week or a month, use beginning inventory + purchases − ending inventory, divided by food sales over the same period. The step most food trucks get wrong is the weight: you buy raw and serve cooked, so the cost per ounce served is higher than the price per ounce on the invoice.

This guide works through both formulas with a real example: a beef taco plate, costed from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' August 2026 average prices and the USDA's own cooking yields. It adds what restaurants actually spend on food according to IRS tax data, and shows how to turn the number into a menu price and a go/no-go on an event.

The three food cost numbers a food truck needs

A food truck needs three versions of food cost, because each catches a different problem. Plate cost tells you whether a menu item is priced right. Theoretical food cost is what your food cost should have been for the period, given what you sold. Actual food cost is what it really was, from your inventory counts and invoices. The gap between the last two is waste, over-portioning, spoilage and theft.

Cost of goods sold (COGS) is the accounting name for the actual figure: the cost of the inventory you used up to make what you sold. On a food truck that is food, beverages and, if you count it here, the packaging each order leaves in. Pick one rule for packaging and keep it, or your percentages will not compare month to month.

How to calculate plate cost (with yield)

Plate cost is the cost of every ingredient in one portion as served. Work it out in four steps:

1. Write the standard portion. Weigh it: 6 oz of cooked taco beef, 1 oz of shredded cheddar, three tortillas, 2 oz of salsa. A portion that changes with whoever is on the line can't be costed.
2. Find the cost per unit you buy. Take it from your latest invoice: price per pound, per case or per dozen.
3. Convert to the weight you serve with a yield figure. Yield is the share of what you buy that ends up on the plate after trimming and cooking. Divide the price per pound by the yield to get the cost per pound served.
4. Add every line. Protein, cheese, tortillas, sauce, garnish, oil, and the boat, foil or clamshell if you count packaging in food cost.

The USDA publishes tested yields in its Food Buying Guide for Child Nutrition Programs, written for school kitchens but measured the same way a truck cooks. From its meats yield table:

A boneless chicken thigh loses more than a third of its purchased weight by the time it is cooked. If you cost thigh tacos on the raw price per pound, your plate cost is too low by more than half again.

Worked example: a beef taco plate

Here is one plate costed from published prices. The beef and cheese prices are the BLS's US city averages for August 2026, the latest month published: ground beef, 100% beef at $6.923 a pound and natural cheddar at $5.983 a pound. These are supermarket prices collected for the Consumer Price Index, not what your distributor charges, so swap in your own invoice when you do this for real. The method is the same.

Plate: three tacos with 2 oz of cooked beef each (6 oz), 1 oz of cheddar, tortillas, onion, cilantro and salsa, sold at $13.

Food cost % so far: $3.88 ÷ $13 = 29.8%, before the tortillas, salsa and packaging.

The same plate costed on raw weight: $6.923 ÷ 16 × 6 oz = $2.60 for the beef, $2.97 with the cheese, or 22.8%. The plate looks 7 points cheaper than it is, and on every plate you are $0.91 short of what you think you made on beef alone.

Working back to a price: to hit a 30% food cost, divide the plate cost by 0.30. The beef and cheese alone need a price of $12.94. Every $0.30 you add for tortillas, salsa and the boat raises the price needed by $1.00.

How to calculate food cost percentage for a week or month

The period formula measures what you actually spent on the food you sold:

Food cost % = (beginning inventory + purchases − ending inventory) ÷ food sales × 100

1. Count beginning inventory at cost on the first day: everything on the truck and everything you store at the commissary.
2. Add purchases for the period from your invoices and receipts, including the cash run to the store before a big event.
3. Count ending inventory at cost on the last day, the same way.
4. Divide by food sales for the same days, before sales tax.

The commissary count matters more for a truck than for a restaurant. In AutoFill PDFs' verified permit data for 47 US cities (updated September 2026), 46 of the 47 list a commissary, central preparation facility, support kitchen or service base as a permit requirement. In 5 of them (Austin, Houston, Portland, Seattle and Tacoma), a truck with enough onboard equipment can be exempted. So for most trucks, part of your inventory sits off the truck. In Los Angeles, the county won't let you store food at home at all. If you count only the truck's coolers, your ending inventory comes out low and your food cost comes out high. Our commissary letter guide covers what the agreement covers.

The IRS asks for the same arithmetic. Part III of Schedule C, where a sole proprietor reports cost of goods sold, starts from beginning inventory, adds purchases, labor, materials and supplies and other costs, and subtracts ending inventory. A count you keep for food cost is a count you can use at tax time. How you report it is a question for your tax preparer.

What a good food cost percentage looks like

Most published "28–35%" targets don't cite a source. Two that do:

The IRS figures come from 653,372 Schedule C returns filed by restaurant and drinking-place owners, the group a sole proprietor food truck files in, with $77.2 billion in receipts. They include bars, where drinks carry a different cost, and full-service restaurants, so treat them as a check rather than a food truck target. No federal agency publishes a food cost figure for food trucks alone.

A useful way to set your own target is from the other side of the ledger. Our food truck revenue and margin guide shows mobile food businesses with employees spent 23.4% of revenue on payroll in 2022 (Census). Add a 30% food cost to that and your prime cost, food plus labor, is already above 53% before commissary rent, fuel, insurance and permits.

Food prices in 2026: when to re-cost

A plate cost is only as current as the invoice behind it. The USDA Economic Research Service's September 25, 2026 Food Price Outlook forecasts these changes for 2026:

The Producer Price Index tracks what sellers receive at the wholesale level, closer to what a distributor charges you than the retail CPI. If the beef on the taco plate above rose by the same 8.5%, its cost would go from $3.51 to $3.81, and the beef and cheese would run 32.2% of a $13 price instead of 29.8%. Re-cost a dish whenever its main protein moves on your invoice, not once a year.

Par levels: buy and prep only what sells in time

A par level is the amount of an item you want on hand to get you to your next restock. A simple version: average use per service × services until the next restock, plus a small buffer for a busy day. On a truck, two limits set the ceiling.

Storage. Cooler space on the truck and your shelf at the commissary.

Shelf life of what you prep. Under section 3-501.17 of the FDA Food Code, the model most state and local food codes are built on, ready-to-eat food that needs temperature control and is held more than 24 hours must be date-marked and used, sold or thrown out within 7 days at 41°F or below, counting the day it was prepared as day 1 (FDA guidance on 3-501.17). Cooked taco beef you prep Monday is gone by Sunday whether it sold or not, and anything you throw out goes straight into your actual food cost. Holding it at 41°F is also what the inspector checks; see our food truck health inspection checklist.

Use yield when you set the prep par, too. One pound of raw ground beef at up to 20% fat gives 11.84 oz cooked, or about two 6 oz plates. Prepping for 60 taco plates takes about 30.4 lb of raw beef, not the 22.5 lb that 60 × 6 oz suggests.

Use the plate cost to judge an event

Plate cost also tells you how many orders an event has to produce before it pays. Subtract the plate cost from the price to get what each order contributes, then divide the event's fixed costs by it.

Take the taco plate at $13 with $3.88 of beef and cheese: each order contributes at most $9.12. In King County, Washington (Seattle), where an event requires one, a single-event temporary food permit for a menu that cooks raw meat falls in the complex tier at $441 (Public Health – Seattle & King County). That is 49 plates just to cover the permit, before the organiser's vendor fee, tortillas, packaging, labor and fuel. Run this number before you apply, not after you've paid the booth fee.

Where the paperwork fits

Once the costing tells you which events and catering jobs are worth taking, each one comes with forms: a vendor application, a temporary permit for the county, and a certificate of insurance naming the organiser. In a full season the same business details go onto dozens of them.

Sources: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Average Price Data: ground beef, 100% beef, US city average (APU0000703112) · BLS, Average Price Data: cheddar cheese, natural, US city average (APU0000710212) (August 2026 values) · USDA Food and Nutrition Service, Food Buying Guide for Child Nutrition Programs, Section 1: Meats/Meat Alternates yield table · IRS Statistics of Income, Nonfarm sole proprietorships, Table 2: income statements by industrial sector, tax year 2023 (column: restaurants and drinking places) · IRS, Instructions for Schedule C (Form 1040) · CAERT, "Calculate Food Cost and Menu Prices", hosted by the Illinois State Board of Education · USDA Economic Research Service, Food Price Outlook: Summary Findings (September 25, 2026 release) · FDA Food Code and FDA, Food Code section 3-501.17 · Public Health – Seattle & King County, Temporary food business permit · US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census (via our revenue guide) · AutoFill PDFs verified permit data, 47 US cities (updated September 2026). All accessed 1 October 2026. Plate costs, yields applied to prices, and percentages on this page are calculated from those published figures.