Free food costing tools for catering colleges and hospitality courses
PrepSheet is a set of free food cost, GP and yield tools built for UK kitchens: GP on the ex-VAT price, 20% VAT handled properly, and real costed British dishes from dated wholesale prices. Students can use all of it without an account, and you can put the calculator on your course page.
Download the student GP and VAT cheat sheet (PDF) → Open the calculator
What students can use, free
- Food cost and GP calculator: plate cost, food cost %, GP % and cash GP, with the VAT taken out first.
- Recipe costing tool: pack price, pack size and amount used for each ingredient, then batch and portion cost and a suggested menu price. Works in the browser, nothing to install.
- 40 costed UK dishes: from cottage pie to a chicken Caesar wrap, each with every ingredient priced from a dated public pack price. Open any of them in the tool and change the numbers.
- Ingredient yield chart and yield calculator: how much of an onion, a chicken or a lemon is usable, with the USDA handbook figure and range for each.
- UK GP benchmarks, sourced: what the UKHospitality × Christie & Co survey actually found (65.9–69% food GP across every segment) and what it does not support.
- Kitchen costing glossary and free templates: recipe costing, prep sheet, allergen matrix and stock take (Excel).
Four short classroom exercises
- Change one price. Open chilli con carne in the tool, put the mince price up by 20% and see how far the portion cost and the menu price move. Then try the same on the chickpea curry.
- Weigh a yield. Weigh a bag of onions, peel them, weigh again. Compare the class's yield with the 90% handbook figure and work out the real cost of a usable kilo.
- Spot the VAT trap. A dish sells for £14 including VAT and costs £3.85. Work out GP on £14, then on £14 ÷ 1.2. The first answer is 72.5%, the second is 67.0%; only the second is right.
- Takeaway or eat in? Cost an egg mayo sandwich and price it at 68% GP twice: zero-rated to take away, 20% VAT to eat in.
There is also a printable cheeseburger costing exercise (PDF) with fictional prices and worked answers.
VAT in one minute
- Eaten in (restaurant, pub, café, your own outside tables): standard-rated, 20%.
- Hot takeaway: standard-rated, 20%.
- Cold takeaway food (a sandwich, a slice of cake to go): generally zero-rated, 0%. The same item eaten in is 20%.
- Alcohol and most soft drinks: 20% wherever they are drunk.
Source: HMRC VAT Notice 709/1, Catering, takeaway food. On the cost side most food you buy is zero-rated, but confectionery, crisps and savoury snacks, ice cream, most soft drinks and all alcohol carry 20% (HMRC VAT Notice 701/14, Food products). This is a summary, not tax advice; the notices have the detail and the exceptions.
Put the calculator on your course page or VLE
If your course site or VLE allows an iframe, paste this and the calculator appears on the page. It is free, sets no cookies, and nothing a student types leaves their browser. More options (a dark version, a different starting GP) are on the embed page.
The small print
- Free for teaching, with or without the PDF handouts. Print and copy them as you like.
- PrepSheet is an independent tool. No accreditation or endorsement by any awarding body is implied.
- Prices on the costed dishes are dated public pack prices, not a supplier quote; the yield figures are averages with ranges. Both are for learning and planning.
- Questions, or want a handout tailored to a unit you teach? Get in touch.
For pubs and cafés · All costed dishes · Ingredient yields · Embed the calculator