What does butter shortbread cost?

The recipe being costed

Make a batch from weighed flour, butter and sugar. Divide the finished baked weight by your sale portion, allowing for broken pieces that cannot be sold.

This is an original costing example, not a claim that every kitchen makes this dish in the same way. Quantities below define the entire example portion. Scale them to your actual recipe and weigh the output before deciding how many servings a batch makes.

Total ingredient cost: $0.4060, displayed as $0.41 after rounding. We keep extra precision through the calculation and round only for display. The chart shows which ingredients contribute the most money to this defined portion; it does not show nutritional proportions.

Purchase and preparation assumptions

• All-purpose flour: $0.545 per lb. Quantity is purchase-basis or ready-to-use weight with no extra trim factor asserted.
• Butter: $3.959 per lb. Quantity is purchase-basis or ready-to-use weight with no extra trim factor asserted.
• White sugar: $1.019 per lb. Quantity is purchase-basis or ready-to-use weight with no extra trim factor asserted.

All prices are US city-average retail observations for September 2026. They are not wholesale estimates or quotations for your kitchen. Pack sizes, brands and delivery agreements may differ. Only the listed ingredients are included. Added seasonings, garnishes, packaging, energy, labor, tax and delivery fees require separate entries or a contribution allowance. A food-cost calculation alone cannot establish whether the dish is profitable.

Menu-price scenarios

These percentages are chosen scenarios, not recommended industry targets. A lower target allocates more of the selling price to labor, overhead and operating income. Check the resulting price against the full menu, guest expectations and your operating budget. After selecting a rounded menu price, divide the ingredient cost by that actual price to see the resulting food-cost percentage.

Adapt the reference to your kitchen

Open this recipe in the ledger, confirm the import and replace the reference prices with dated invoice prices. Existing matching ingredients retain their current ledger prices, so your imported result can differ from this page. Set the selling price yourself; the loaded recipe starts without a sale price to avoid presenting a scenario as a decision.

Measure the batch you really produce, including losses that prevent a portion from being sold. If a component is shared across dishes, make it a sub-recipe and use its measured finished yield. Test an ingredient price change before applying it to see the effect on every affected recipe. Save a JSON or CSV backup when the recipe is ready for service.