The Restaurant Recipe Yield Guide

By Rob Bruni, founder of OpsEdge Hospitality, twenty years running restaurants, bars, clubs and resorts. Updated November 2026.

Free printable: Food Cost Leak Audit (PDF)

A recipe card that costs a 6 ounce salmon portion at the invoice price of a whole fish understates it by about a third, and every plate cost, menu price and food cost target built on it inherits the error. The fix is yield: the share of what you buy that actually ends up on the plate after trimming, peeling and cooking. This guide shows how to run a yield test in your own kitchen, how to handle trim you can reuse and weight lost in cooking, and how to use the result to cost recipes, order the right amount and decide whether to break product down in house, with worked examples for a whole salmon and a smoked brisket.

Why yield is the step most cost cards get wrong

The invoice tells you what you paid per pound as purchased. The plate needs to know what you paid per pound of usable product. The gap between the two is trim, peel, bones, fat and the water and fat that cook out, and for proteins it is often 30 to 50 percent of what came in the door. Skip it and the cost card is understated, the menu is underpriced, and the kitchen gets blamed for a food cost that the card made impossible to hit. It also shows up as a permanent gap between actual and theoretical food cost that nobody can find.

The three numbers: as purchased, usable and yield percent

• As purchased (AP): the weight and price on the invoice.
• Edible portion (EP), or usable weight: what is left that you can serve, after trimming, peeling and, where it applies, cooking.
• Yield percent: usable weight divided by as purchased weight.

And the two formulas that do all the work:

Usable cost per pound = AP cost per pound ÷ yield percent

Quantity to buy = usable quantity needed ÷ yield percent

The recipe costing guide covers how these fit on a full cost card.

How to run a yield test

1. Pick the item and use a normal delivery, not the best case you have seen.
2. Weigh it as purchased on a calibrated scale and record the invoice price.
3. Break it down the way your kitchen actually does, by the cook who usually does it.
4. Weigh every pile separately: usable product, trim you will reuse in another dish, and waste.
5. If it is cooked before portioning, weigh it again after cooking and resting.
6. Calculate yield percent and usable cost per pound, and write both on the ingredient line of every card that uses it.
7. Repeat it two or three times across different deliveries and average the results. One test can be a lucky fish.

Worked example: a whole salmon, with a by-product credit

Salmon yield test	Weight	Value
Whole fish as purchased, at $9.80 a pound	12.0 lb	$117.60
Usable fillet, skinned and pinboned	7.6 lb
Belly and trim kept for salmon cakes (credited at $4.00 a pound)	1.2 lb	minus $4.80
Head, frame, skin and waste	3.2 lb
Yield (fillet as a share of the whole fish)	63.3%
Cost per usable pound of fillet		$14.84
Cost of a 6 ounce portion		$5.57

Costed at the invoice price, a 6 ounce portion looks like $3.68. Its real cost is $5.57, about 51 percent more. On a $29 entree that is the difference between a 13 percent plate cost and a 19 percent one before the sides go on.

The belly and trim are not waste: they go into salmon cakes, so we credit them at a fair value (what that product would otherwise cost) and subtract it from the cost of the fish. Only credit trim you really use. If the salmon cakes do not sell, the credit is fiction and the fillet should carry the full cost.

Cook loss: when the yield happens in the oven

For anything roasted, braised or smoked before it is portioned, the yield has two stages: trim yield and cook yield. Multiply them for the total, or simply divide the final weight by the starting weight.

Brisket yield test	Weight	Yield
Packer brisket as purchased, at $4.90 a pound ($68.60)	14.0 lb	100%
After trimming fat	12.2 lb	87.1% (trim yield)
After smoking, rested and sliced	7.3 lb	59.8% of trimmed (cook yield)
Total yield		52.1%
Cost per cooked pound		$9.40
Cost of a 5 ounce portion		$2.94

At $4.90 a pound on the invoice, the brisket costs $9.40 a pound on the plate. Cook loss changes with temperature, time, the size and grade of the cut and how long it rests, so standardize the method before you test it, and retest when the method changes.

Produce yields

Produce yield is easy to ignore because each item is cheap, but it adds up across a menu. Outer leaves, cores, peels, seeds, stems and tops all leave the case before the product reaches the plate. Test the high-volume items: lettuces, onions, peppers, herbs, citrus for juice, pineapple and melon, avocados. Herbs and citrus juice often have the lowest yields in the kitchen, and garnishes are where small yields hide the biggest cost per ounce. Published yield charts are a useful starting point, but your own cooks, your own cuts and your own suppliers' product are what matter.

Using yields to cost, order and decide buy versus break down

Costing. Every ingredient line on every recipe card should use the usable cost, not the invoice cost. A good cost card system stores the yield on the ingredient once, so every card that uses it is right.

Ordering. Divide what you need to serve by the yield. If the weekend forecast calls for 40 pounds of sliced brisket, you need 40 ÷ 0.521 = about 77 pounds as purchased. Ordering 40 pounds of raw brisket leaves you short by Saturday night.

Buy versus break down. Compare the usable cost from your yield test, plus the labor to break it down, against the price of the pre-cut product. In the salmon example, skinned and portioned fillet at $14.50 a pound would cost about the same as breaking down whole fish at $14.84 a pound before labor, so the decision comes down to labor, consistency and how much you value the trim. For proteins with a big price gap, breaking down in house usually wins; for low-yield, labor-heavy items it often does not.

When to retest

• A new supplier, brand, grade or pack size.
• A new cut, a new recipe or a new cooking method.
• A new cook doing the breakdown.
• A season change for produce.
• Food cost or actual versus theoretical variance drifting up with no other explanation.
• At least once or twice a year for your top proteins anyway.

Run the results through the free food cost calculator to see what the corrected plate costs mean for your food cost percent.

FAQ

What is yield percentage in cooking?

Yield percentage is the usable weight of a product divided by the weight you bought. If a 12 pound whole salmon gives 7.6 pounds of usable fillet, the yield is 63.3 percent.

How do you calculate the cost of an ingredient after yield?

Divide the as purchased cost per pound by the yield percent. A product bought at $4.90 a pound with a 52 percent total yield costs about $9.40 per usable pound.

How do you account for cooking loss in recipe costing?

Weigh the product after trimming, then again after cooking and resting. Divide the cooked weight by the original as purchased weight for the total yield, and use that to cost the cooked portion.

How much should I order using yield percentage?

Divide the amount you need to serve by the yield percent. To serve 40 pounds of cooked brisket at a 52 percent total yield, buy about 77 pounds as purchased.

How often should a restaurant do yield tests?

Whenever the supplier, cut, grade, recipe, cooking method or the person doing the breakdown changes, when produce seasons change, and at least once or twice a year for your highest-cost items.