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.

By Heidi Macomber · September 4, 2026

Pay Yourself First: Why Owner's Pay Belongs in Your Food Business Numbers

If your prices do not include your own paycheck, every sale is quietly paying you to go broke. Here is what changes when you put a real wage into the math, from day one.

The Trap That Fails Slowly

There is a conversation happening right now in food business communities, among food truck owners especially. Someone asks how everyone handles paying themselves. The answers split into two groups.

One group says they cannot afford to take any pay yet. They work long hours and put every dollar back into the business. Their revenue numbers look alive. Their lives look exhausted.

The other group made it through. And their answer is almost always the same: they paid themselves on a fixed schedule whether it felt comfortable or not, and when the business could not cover that pay, they treated it as a signal to change something, not a reason to skip the paycheck.

The difference between those groups is not work ethic or talent. It is whether the owner's pay was ever inside the math.

Here is the hard version. When you leave your own pay out of the equation, you are not avoiding a cost. You are hiding it. The business does not stop owing you for your time. It defers the debt, quietly, week after week, while revenue looks fine. Skipping owner's pay does not make a failing business succeed. It changes the amount of time it takes to find out.

Why Your Brain Accepts the Hidden Cost

Part of why this trap works is that unpaid owner labor is invisible in normal accounting.

If a supplier shipped you flour and you never paid the invoice, you would track that debt. It would sit on your books as accounts payable and demand attention. Your own hours work the same way economically. But no invoice arrives for them, so nothing on your books shows the balance growing.

Psychologically, unpaid labor feels free in a way that cash costs never do. Paying $600 cash for propane stings. Working a 60 hour week for $0 feels like hustle. Two costs of the same size, one emotional and one invisible, and the invisible one never triggers the alarm it should.

That is exactly why it has to be built in on purpose.

What Changes When You Add Your Wage

Watch what happens to a simple weekly picture when owner's pay becomes a line item.

The typical no-pay version: revenue $3,000, ingredients and packaging $950, propane and gas $180, insurance and permits $115, fees $90, misc $115. Total costs $1,450. Profit on paper: $1,550. That number looks like proof you are making it.

Now the same week with a wage inside it. Owner's pay at $15 an hour for 50 hours: $750. Total costs become $2,200. Real profit: $800. Still positive, still real, and now you can see the actual gap between where you are and where you need to be.

Run the same correction on the whole year and the scale becomes clear. Fifty weeks at that $750 comes to $37,500 of your labor the no-pay version was quietly absorbing.

The Number That Makes the Decisions For You

Here is where the owners who made it through use owner's pay differently. It keeps the books true, and it works as an early warning system.

Pick a modest wage, something defensible for the skill and the hours. Put it in the math as a fixed weekly amount. Then watch one number: can the business cover it?

If yes, you are genuinely covering costs including yourself, and growth decisions get made from truth.

If no, the gap is your to-do list. Close it by raising prices, cutting costs, or selling more. Track the gap in dollars per week.

And if the gap stays stuck after sustained effort, that gap is the answer to a different question. The owners in that conversation who made it through did not treat an unpayable wage as a reason to work more unpaid hours. They treated it as the signal to change the model: find another route, another concept, another way, or exit before the losses are total. The wage does not just measure the business. It measures whether the business deserves more of your unpaid time.

How to Actually Do It

Step 1: Pick your wage. A defensible floor is the highest minimum wage where you operate, since you are at least a minimum wage worker in your own business. The federal floor is $7.25 an hour, and your state floor is often higher (the Department of Labor publishes a state-by-state table at dol.gov). Many owners set $12 to $15 to start, then raise it as the business can absorb it.

Step 2: Put it in as a fixed weekly number. Hours times wage. Fifty hours at $15 is $750 a week. Write it into your cost stack right alongside ingredients and propane.

And budget for the tax. When you are an employee, your employer covers half of Social Security and Medicare taxes and sends it in for you. When you are the business, you are both sides: self-employment tax runs 15.3 percent on net self-employment earnings, per the IRS. So a $750 weekly draw really costs the plan $750 plus its share of tax. Set aside roughly 15 to 20 percent of each draw for taxes, or keep it simple and treat your all-in weekly cost as $875 to $900.

Step 3: Choose the mechanism, not just the amount. A regular owner's draw on a fixed schedule, separate from any profit split, works for most small food businesses. The point is the schedule: same day, same amount, treated like rent.

Step 4: Review it monthly against that early warning number. Can the business cover the draw or not, and by how much? That single number, covered or gap, is your monthly verdict.

What Not to Do

Do not pay yourself from whatever is left over. Whatever's left is a random number decided by forces outside your control. A wage is a decision you make.

Do not wait for profitability first. "I will start paying myself once we are profitable" keeps the goalpost undefined, because the numbers you are using to define profit exclude your labor. The business can look profitable forever that way.

Do not treat a good month as permission. One strong Saturday market does not mean the wage is now affordable. The verdict comes from the fixed weekly number, not from feelings after good weeks.

Do not confuse draws with profit distributions. The draw covers your labor. Profit is what remains after every cost including you. Blurring them is how owners end up celebrating revenue that actually owes them back pay.

The Percy Plate Angle

Percy Plate prices recipes and menus with every cost visible: ingredients, packaging, overhead. The owner's pay slot belongs in that same stack, because a menu price built without your wage is a price that assumes you work for free. When egg prices spike or the propane budget climbs, you see it in the same place you see your own pay, and you can see whether the price still covers all of it.

Start free at percyplate.com/getting-started. Built for independent food businesses.

Related Guides

How to Price Baked Goods: A Guide for Cottage Food Operators - Ingredient-to-price math for home bakers
Break-Even Analysis for Food Businesses: Find Your Real Number - Break-even math including owner labor

Stop guessing what your dishes cost.

Percy Plate calculates recipe costs, menu prices, and FDA-compliant labels for food businesses. Free to start.

Create your free account

View this article in the app: https://percyplate.com/blog/pay-yourself-first-food-business