Percy Plate is a web-based food cost calculator for food trucks, caterers, cottage food producers, and small restaurant owners. It lets you enter your ingredients and what you pay for them, build recipes, and instantly see the cost per serving and recommended sell price based on your target food cost percentage.

Yes. Percy Plate has a free plan that lets you create up to 10 ingredients and 5 recipes to calculate food cost. A paid subscription ($14.99/month or $119.99/year) unlocks unlimited ingredients and recipes plus inventory tracking, revenue reporting, menu engineering, Prime Cost, AI invoice scanning, FDA nutrition facts labels, FDA ingredient labels, and label printing.

How does Percy Plate calculate food cost?

You enter each ingredient, the unit you buy it in (lb, oz, gallon, etc.), and what you pay per unit. When you build a recipe, Percy Plate converts the recipe quantities to your purchase units, calculates the cost of each ingredient used, and divides by the number of servings to give you a cost per serving. It also shows the food cost percentage and a suggested sell price.

Can Percy Plate generate nutrition facts labels?

Yes. Percy Plate can look up nutrition data from the USDA FoodData Central database for each ingredient, then automatically calculate the per-serving nutrition for a recipe. It generates an FDA-format Nutrition Facts panel that can be printed directly to thermal labels (Brother, Dymo, Zebra) or Avery sheet labels in sizes 2x4 inch and 3.33x4 inch.

Can Percy Plate generate an ingredient list label?

Yes. Percy Plate generates an FDA-compliant ingredient label that lists ingredients by weight (heaviest first), automatically detects the top 9 FDA allergens, and includes your business name and net weight. Labels can be printed to thermal printers or Avery sheet labels.

What label printers work with Percy Plate?

Percy Plate supports thermal label printers including Brother QL series (DK-1202 2x4 inch labels), Dymo LabelWriter (30334 and similar), and Zebra desktop printers. It also supports Avery 5163 (2x4 inch) and Avery 5164 (3.33x4 inch) sheet labels for standard desktop printers.

Who is Percy Plate designed for?

Percy Plate is designed for small food business owners including food truck operators, cottage food producers, caterers, small restaurant owners, and anyone who sells homemade or prepared food and needs to track ingredient costs, price their menu, and produce product labels.

Does Percy Plate work on mobile?

Yes. Percy Plate is a web application that works on any device with a modern browser, including phones and tablets. You can look up ingredient costs, update recipe quantities, and check your food cost percentage from anywhere.

How do you calculate food cost percentage?

Food cost percentage = (ingredient cost per serving ÷ menu price) × 100. For example, if your ingredients cost $3.50 and you sell the dish for $12.00, your food cost percentage is 29.2%. Most food businesses target 28–35%. To set a price from a target, divide ingredient cost by your target: $3.50 ÷ 0.30 = $11.67 suggested price at 30% food cost.

What is a good food cost percentage for a small food business or bakery?

Most food businesses target a food cost percentage between 28% and 35%. Bakeries and cottage food producers often achieve lower food cost percentages (20–28%) because flour, sugar, and butter are inexpensive relative to retail prices. Full-service restaurants tend to run 30–35%. The right target depends on your labor costs, overhead, and pricing power in your market.

How do I calculate the cost per serving of a recipe?

Add up the ingredient cost for the full batch, then divide by the number of servings. For each ingredient, multiply the quantity used by the cost per unit (converting units as needed). For example: 8 oz flour at $0.89/lb = $0.89 ÷ 16 × 8 = $0.44. Sum all ingredient costs, then divide by servings. Percy Plate does this calculation automatically once you enter your ingredient prices and recipe quantities.

How does yield percentage affect recipe costing?

Yield percentage accounts for trim loss, cooking shrinkage, and waste. If you buy 1 lb of chicken but only 0.75 lb is usable after trimming, your yield is 75%. To get accurate food costs, divide the as-purchased cost by the yield percentage: $4.00/lb ÷ 0.75 = $5.33 per usable pound. Percy Plate lets you set a yield percentage (AP to EP) on any ingredient so your recipe costs reflect what you actually use.

What is the best recipe costing software for a small food business?

The best recipe costing software for a small food business depends on your needs. Percy Plate ($14.99/month) is built specifically for cottage food producers, food trucks, caterers, and small restaurants — it includes recipe costing, menu pricing, FDA ingredient labels, nutrition facts labels, inventory tracking, and revenue reporting. Competitors like meez start at $24/month and scale to $199/month. Square and Toast do not include recipe costing natively.

Is there free recipe costing software for home bakers or cottage food businesses?

Yes. Percy Plate has a free plan that includes recipe food cost calculation and menu pricing suggestions. The free plan lets you create up to 10 ingredients and 5 recipes. For unlimited recipes, FDA labels, nutrition facts, and inventory tracking, the paid plan is $14.99/month or $119.99/year. No credit card is required to start.

How do I price homemade baked goods to make a profit?

Start with your ingredient cost per batch, then divide by the number of units to get ingredient cost per item. Add packaging (boxes, bags, labels) as a per-unit cost. Then set a target food cost percentage — most cottage food bakers aim for 25–35% — and divide your total ingredient cost by that percentage to get a minimum price. For example: $0.85 ingredient cost per cookie ÷ 0.30 = $2.83 minimum price at 30% food cost. Factor in your time and overhead to ensure you are actually profitable, not just covering ingredients.

What are the labeling requirements for cottage food products?

Most states require cottage food labels to include: (1) the product name, (2) your name and home address, (3) a list of ingredients in descending order by weight, (4) a disclosure statement such as 'Made in a home kitchen not inspected by the state or local health department,' and (5) allergen declarations for any of the 9 major FDA allergens present. Some states also require net weight. Requirements vary by state — check your state's cottage food law for specifics. Nutrition Facts panels are generally not required for cottage food operations below a certain revenue threshold.

Do I need a nutrition facts label on my cottage food products?

Most cottage food producers are exempt from FDA Nutrition Facts label requirements under the small business exemption (fewer than 100 full-time employees and fewer than 100,000 units sold annually). However, you must still list ingredients in descending order by weight and declare all major allergens. Some states impose additional requirements. When in doubt, check your state's cottage food law and the FDA's small business labeling exemptions.

What allergens must I disclose on a homemade food label?

FDA requires disclosure of 9 major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, and sesame. These must be declared on all food labels, including cottage food products — even if a full Nutrition Facts panel is not required. The standard format is a 'Contains:' statement after the ingredient list, for example: 'Contains: Wheat, Eggs, Milk.' Percy Plate detects all 9 allergens automatically from your ingredient names.

How do I create a nutrition facts label for homemade food?

To create a Nutrition Facts label for homemade food: (1) look up the nutrition data for each ingredient using the USDA FoodData Central database, (2) calculate the per-serving amounts for calories, fat, carbohydrates, protein, sodium, and other nutrients, (3) format the panel according to FDA guidelines with serving size, servings per container, and daily value percentages. Percy Plate automates this — it looks up USDA nutrition data for your ingredients, calculates per-serving totals, and generates a print-ready FDA-format Nutrition Facts label for thermal or sheet labels.

How do I list ingredients in the correct order on a food label?

FDA regulations require ingredients to be listed in descending order by weight — the ingredient present in the greatest amount by weight must appear first. For example, if your muffin contains more flour than sugar, flour must be listed first. Sub-ingredients (like those in a chocolate chip) must be listed in parentheses immediately after the component. Percy Plate sorts ingredients automatically by weight when generating your label.

What information is required on a homemade food product label?

A complete homemade food label generally requires: (1) the name of the food, (2) the net quantity (weight or count), (3) an ingredient list in descending order by weight, (4) allergen declarations for all 9 major FDA allergens, (5) your business name and address, and (6) for cottage food specifically, a state-required disclosure statement such as 'Made in a home kitchen not inspected by the state health department.' Nutrition Facts panels are usually optional for small cottage food producers below certain revenue thresholds.

You Just Got Your Cottage Food License. Here Is the Math to Do Before Your First Market

By Heidi Macomber · September 8, 2026 (updated October 13, 2026)

The license came in the mail, your first farmers market is Saturday, and everybody who has tasted your cookies says you should sell them.

So you looked at what the bakery in town charges, knocked a couple dollars off because you feel like an amateur, and called it a price.

That is how most cottage bakers start, and it is why so many of them are busy every weekend and still not making money. Being fully booked is not the same as being paid.

In this post I want to show you the math that tells you what a dozen of your cookies actually earns you, and how to do all of it yourself, for free, this week.

Here's how to do it yourself, for free

→ Cost out one dozen of your best seller, to the quarter-teaspoon. Not your whole menu. The product you sell most of.

→ Write down what you actually paid for every ingredient, using the receipt: the flour bag, the butter box, the vanilla bottle.

→ Convert each package into per-use amounts. A 5-pound bag of all-purpose flour holds about 17.5 cups. If the bag cost $3.49, one cup costs 20 cents ($3.49 divided by 17.5). Do that for every ingredient.

→ Add packaging. The box, the liner, the sticker, the label. Bakers leave these out because flour feels like a cost and a box feels like nothing. The box is a cost too.

→ Add your share of the market. Booth fee divided by the dozens you realistically sell per market, plus mileage. A $30 booth where you sell 30 dozen adds a dollar to every dozen.

→ Divide the total by your price. That is your food cost percentage.

That costs you nothing but an evening, and you can start it today.

A worked example

Chocolate chip cookies, one dozen, using example grocery prices. Plug in your own receipt.

Item	Cost per dozen
Butter (2 sticks per 4.5-dozen batch, $4.99 a pound)	$0.56
Flour (half a cup per dozen, 20 cents a cup)	$0.10
White and brown sugar	$0.17
Eggs (2 per batch, $4.50 a dozen)	$0.17
Vanilla (2 teaspoons per batch)	$0.22
Chocolate chips (one 12-oz bag per batch, $3.99)	$0.89
Ingredients total	$2.11
Packaging (box, liner, sticker)	$0.85
Market share ($30 booth over 30 dozen)	$1.00
True cost per dozen	$3.96

Charge $12 a dozen and $3.96 divided by $12 is 0.33. About 33 cents of every dollar goes to the cookies, the box, and the booth. The other 67 cents pays you, covers your mileage, and builds the business.

Charge $8 and that same math is $3.96 divided by $8, or just under 50%. Half of every sale gone before you have paid yourself anything. A busy market at $8 a dozen can lose you money in front of a line of happy customers.

Why should you care?

Per-dozen cost is the cleanest signal in a cottage business, because it holds everything else constant.

Same recipe, same market, same Saturday, and one price hands you 67 cents on the dollar while the other hands you about 50. Whatever caused that gap is one decision you made at your kitchen table, and it is the only thing that changed.

The trap in the spreadsheet method

Here is the part nobody warns you about: ingredient prices move constantly, and a spreadsheet holds the old price until someone re-keys it.

Butter spikes before the holidays, flour creeps up in the spring, and the sheet still says you make $8 a dozen. If you sell 30 dozen before you catch it, every one of them earned you less than that $8, and nothing at the market tells you, because the cookies still sell out.

If your time is worth more than $14.99 a month, this is exactly what we built Percy Plate for.

You enter ingredient prices once, and every recipe gets an exact cost per dozen that updates when a price changes. Update butter and every cookie recipe moves with it, the same day.

You see suggested sell prices from your target food cost percentage, so when packaging or booth fees rise you know immediately what the new price needs to be.

And when your products need a nutrition label, Percy Plate generates it from your recipe instead of you typing it out by hand at 11 p.m. before market day.

Create your free account → Free forever, no credit card, takes 30 seconds. Pro is $14.99/month for menu engineering, inventory tracking, and labels on top.

If you are still deciding whether to start

Do the one-dozen exercise before you sign up for a single market. If the math says your best seller earns minimum wage, you want to know that at your kitchen table, not at the end of a season of early mornings.

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Stop guessing what your dishes cost.

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