Recipe costing sheet and food cost of fish:yield, calculation, example

01

Recipe costing sheet, food cost, food cost ratio: what are we talking about?

• The recipe costing sheet describes a dish: ingredients, gross and net weights, steps, cost. It is the basis of every calculation.
• The food cost of a plate is the sum of its ingredients, at the weight actually bought.
• The food cost ratio relates this cost to the selling price excluding VAT: food cost ÷ selling price excl. VAT × 100. There is no official standard: each establishment sets its target according to its menu, its average price and the weight of its labour costs.
• The multiplier is its inverse: selling price excl. VAT ÷ food cost. A multiplier of 3.33 corresponds to a ratio of 30%.

02

Why does fish trip up the calculation?

Because it is bought whole, gutted or as tails, and served as fillets, thick portions or suprêmes. In between: the head, the skin, the bones, the trimmings. The yield is the ratio between the usable weight and the weight bought:

yield = usable net weight ÷ gross weight bought

It depends on the species, the presentation bought, the cut served, the size grade, the season and the hand doing the filleting. The same sea bass gives more as a skin-on fillet than as a trimmed skinless suprême.

03

What is the fillet yield of each species?

Published figures vary widely. The FAO points out that, for lack of common definitions of "fillet" and "edible part", the yields published for the same species can vary by a factor of two. The table below cross-references two public sources and specifies what they measure.

Sources: Seafish, Seafood Guide, "Yields" table (skin-on fillets unless stated; for skinless portions, Seafish indicates a yield reduced by approximately 10%); FAO, Fisheries Technical Paper No 309 (1989). n/a: not provided by the source. For monkfish bought as tails, the most common case in France, the yield is calculated on the tail and not on the whole fish: no public source puts a figure on it, measure it on your deliveries.

Two useful readings. Flatfish (Dover sole, turbot, brill) give four fillets but no more flesh, in proportion, than roundfish of the same weight: Seafish gives 50% for a Dover sole as for a cod. And the cut counts as much as the species: a 3 to 4 kg turbot yields 60% as thick portions but 34% as trimmed suprêmes.

04

How to calculate food cost: a worked example

Dish: line-caught sea bass fillet, 160 g of raw skin-on fillet per plate.

Key point: the price that counts is not the one on the price list (€24), it is the price per kilo of fillet (€54.55). For 40 covers, you need to order 40 × 364 g, that is about 14.5 kg of whole sea bass, not 6.4 kg.

05

What does the purchase price change?

Same dish, same yield, selling price set at €41 incl. VAT (€37.27 excl. VAT), still as an illustrative example.

Ten per cent on the price of the fish moves the ratio by more than two points. On a menu where fish weighs heavily, that is the difference between a profitable dish and one that no longer is.

06

What does the yield, and therefore the size grade, change?

Yield acts exactly like price. With a yield of 40% instead of 44%, you need 400 g of sea bass per portion instead of 364 g: the fish cost goes from €8.73 to €9.60, as if the purchase price had risen by 10%.

Yet yield depends on the size grade and the cut: according to Seafish, a 750 g turbot gives 50% as fillets, a 3 to 4 kg turbot 60% as thick portions. Compare two sea bass size grades (illustrative example, hypothetical prices and yields):

On the price list, the large size grade costs 26% more per kilo. On the plate, the gap is only 10%. The right choice depends on the cut served: a whole fillet on the plate calls for the small size grade, a thick portion for the large one.

07

How to measure your own yield?

The tables give an order of magnitude. The only reliable figure for your recipe costing sheet is your own: