Santa Barbara · Goleta · Montecito · Carpinteria
Four focused calculators for restaurants, cafes, bars, caterers, food trucks and senior living. Cost a dish ingredient by ingredient, check your food cost percentage, and see what a supplier price rise really does — in about a minute, right in your browser.
Built for kitchens in Santa Barbara, Goleta, Montecito and Carpinteria — useful anywhere you serve food.
Each tool answers one decision: is this dish priced right, what does it really cost, what is price creep doing to you, and what happens if you absorb a price rise — or pass one on. Everything runs right here in your browser; nothing is sent or shared, and any plate you save in the builder stays in this browser, on this device.
Targets change with the concept — a café and a steakhouse shouldn't chase the same number.
Everything on the plate: protein, produce, oil, garnish, the works. Not sure? Build it ingredient by ingredient in tab 2.
For prime cost — food cost plus labor, the number owners actually watch.
Your food cost
Local? Text these numbers to Joel at Jordano's for a free second quote — see Local Services.
Target ranges are the published industry benchmarks (National Restaurant Association and Toast data) — the same ones the paid tools use.
Cost one dish the way the paid apps do it — line by line. A sample plate is loaded so you can see it work; swap in your own dish. Ingredients you buy again and again live in your ingredient library below — change a price there once and every dish using it picks up the new cost.
True cost of this plate
Local? Text these numbers to Joel at Jordano's for a free second quote — see Local Services.
Runs entirely in your browser, and your recipes and prices are never sent anywhere. Saved plates live in this browser only — see Save my work below.
Costing a dish takes real work — keep it. Saved recipes are stored only in this browser, on this device. There is no account and nothing is ever sent to us or anyone else. One heads-up: clearing your browser data, or using a private window, can delete saved recipes — export a backup file below to keep them safe.
No saved recipes yet. Build a dish above, give it a name, and hit Save recipe — it will be waiting here next time you open this page in this browser.
The price of chicken is the price of chicken — type it once, here, and reuse it in every dish. Enter what you pay for the whole pack and the yield you actually get from it; the library works out the true cost per ounce, cup or piece. Then use Add to dish to drop it into the plate builder above as a linked line: when you change the price here, the dish cost updates with it. Like your recipes, the library is stored only in this browser, on this device — nothing is ever sent anywhere. Typing over the name or cost of a linked line in the builder unlinks just that line.
Your library is empty. Add your first ingredient above — or start with a few typical Santa Barbara kitchen staples and edit the prices to match what you actually pay.
Food, paper, chemicals, drinks — everything on the trucks.
Not sure? 3% is a conservative year for foodservice pricing. Check two invoices from January against today.
Price creep is costing you
Local? Text these numbers to Joel at Jordano's for a free second quote — see Local Services.
Estimated from the numbers you entered — not a quote and not a guaranteed saving.
Your supplier just raised prices. Before you absorb it or panic-reprint the menu, run both directions: what the increase does to you, and what a small menu move does back.
If you absorb the increase
Local? Text these numbers to Joel at Jordano's for a free second quote — see Local Services.
Three steps, no account, nothing to install. You bring the numbers from your own kitchen; the tools do the math and show their work.
A dish, a percentage, a price rise — start with the question you are actually trying to answer.
Plate cost, menu price, covers, invoices — your numbers, from your kitchen, typed into your browser.
Reprice, re-portion, re-cost — or, if you are local, ask for a second quote with the numbers already in hand.
Checks one dish's food cost and prime cost against the published benchmark range for your kind of kitchen, so you can see whether the dish sits inside its healthy range.
Costs a dish ingredient by ingredient — the true plate cost — and shows the menu price that would hit your target food cost percentage.
Turns small supplier price rises into a yearly number, estimated from the weekly spend and creep you enter, so drift stops being invisible.
Shows what absorbing a supplier increase costs per year, and the menu prices that would hold your food cost percentage or your profit per plate instead.
Pick a plate, run its real cost, and see where it lands against the range for your kind of kitchen. Two minutes in the calculator beats a month of guessing.
Every season and holiday, this board refreshes with drinks and dishes built to sell right now — then it's gone when the calendar turns. Right now it is October, and October belongs to Halloween: five drinks your bar can put on a limited-time menu this week, each one paired with a low cost bite plated and decorated to match it.
Neon green, smoky-sweet, and impossible to scroll past.
Plate it with: Toxic Guac Cups — guacamole piped into hollowed cucumber cups with a Tajín dusted rim. Cucumber costs pennies against fried shells, the green on green matches the drink, and a piping bag makes a cheap bite look catered.
Serve it in a skull glass — the glassware is half the show.
A deep-red bourbon drink with a dramatic black rim.
Plate it with: Bleeding Beet Crostini — roasted beet purée over whipped goat cheese on toasted crostini. Beets are one of the cheapest vegetables in the case, yesterday's bread becomes the crostini, and the beet juice bleeds into the cheese on its own for the photo.
Let a little of the red run down the glass — it photographs itself.
A color-changing purple gin sour with a soft foam cap.
Plate it with: Midnight Blue Corn Nachos — blue corn chips under queso blanco with pickled red onion. Chips carry some of the best margin in the building, the deep blue and white match the drink's color story, and a shareable plate lifts the whole check.
The gin shifts color as the citrus hits — tell guests to watch the pour.
Fall in a glass — warm spice, maple, and a wisp of smoke.
Plate it with: Pumpkin Soup Shooters — roasted pumpkin soup in shooter glasses with smoked paprika oil and toasted seeds from the same pumpkin. Soup is the lowest plate cost in any kitchen, the shooter glass makes it read premium, and the garnish is already in the ingredient.
Light the cinnamon at the table — the smell sells the next round.
A margarita in a Halloween costume: pale, frosty, black-salted.
Plate it with: Ghost Tostadas — crisp tostadas with refried black beans, a crema ghost swirled from a squeeze bottle, and cotija snow. Beans are the cheapest protein on the truck, the black and white contrast matches the drink exactly, and the decoration costs nothing but a squeeze bottle.
A familiar favorite in disguise — the easiest yes on the menu.
This board turns with the calendar — warm-spice drinks and holiday menus are next, then a fresh set for New Year's. This board refreshes each season — check back for the next set of ideas.
"Gone November 1st" is a reason to come in this weekend. A seasonal menu with an end date outsells one that just sits there.
Pick a single hero, put it on the table tents and the socials, and let the rest of the menu support it. One star sells better than fifteen specials.
Guests post what looks wild — a skull glass, a black salt rim, a smoked garnish. Build the drink so the picture takes itself, then the marketing is free.
Pre-batch the base mix before service and finish each drink to order. Seasonal rushes shouldn't slow the well down.
Novelty supports a premium price — but cost the drink first. Run it through the plate builder so the special makes money, not just noise.
If every server can describe the signature drink in one sentence, it sells itself table to table. Print the line on the prep sheet.
The stuff that quietly eats margin in Santa Barbara kitchens — none of it needs a new supplier to start fixing.
Prices agreed in January are rarely the prices on December invoices. Spot-check your top 10 items twice a year against a second quote.
Splitting food, paper and chemicals across suppliers means delivery fees and padded small orders. Add yours up for one month — consolidating deliveries is one way kitchens kill both.
Every emergency retail run for a missing case costs 30–60% over wholesale, plus a cook's hour. A standing order review prevents most of them.
Half an ounce extra per plate, 300 plates a week, is real money by December. Cost your top five sellers with fresh weights, not the recipe card from 2022.
Your highest-volume items should not float with the market. Ask for locks on the five products you buy every single week.
Coffee, towels, gloves and chemicals bought at retail add up fast. They ride free on the same truck as your food order.
If your menu hasn't moved in a year but your invoices have, the gap came out of your pocket. A quarterly food-cost review catches it while it's small.
Run your top five dishes through the plate builder and cost them with fresh weights — most of these killers show up in the math. In the Santa Barbara area? Local Services can give you a free second quote on the same basket.
Send Joel one recent invoice from your current supplier. He prices the same items against Jordano's, line by line, and texts you back the lines where he can beat your price — and by how much. Free, and no obligation to switch anything.
One invoice from the last 30 days is plenty. Photo or PDF — every page, flat and readable.
Your items, your pack sizes, priced against the same basket at Jordano's — and he will tell you the lines where your current price is already good.
What he can beat, what he can't, and what the difference is worth over a year. The numbers are yours to keep either way.
He'll compare it line by line with Jordano's pricing and text your results to the mobile number you gave: what he can beat, and by how much. Keep an eye on your texts.
Optional — in person, Santa Barbara area only
Plate Cost Boss is built and maintained by Joel Cummings, a Jordano's Foodservice sales rep in Santa Barbara. The services below are separate from the calculators and never required to use them — they are here for kitchens in the Santa Barbara area that want a person, not just a tool. Joel brings 15+ years of running high volume nightclubs and restaurants to every visit.
Software stops at the screen. Jordano's corporate chef comes to you in person, works your actual menu at your actual line, and brings product samples to taste before you commit to anything. Here it's a free visit you can just ask for.
The local one-stop shop: food, drinks, paper and chemicals on one truck, delivered Monday through Saturday across the South Coast.
Send two invoices. You get the same basket priced line by line — keep it even if you stay put.
Lock pricing on the items you buy weekly so your food cost stops drifting with every market twitch.
Joel reviews your numbers with you weekly, not at renewal time when it's too late to matter.
Menu optimization, plate costing on real dishes, fresh ideas, samples to taste — in your kitchen, free. See the chef visit above.
Order what you actually need. Goleta warehouse at 550 S Patterson Ave keeps it close and fast.
The four calculators on this page are free to use, with no signup and no trial clock. They were built for local kitchens and there is no plan to put them behind a paywall. If optional premium features are ever added — for example, saved menus or price alerts — they will be new additions, and the calculators here will stay available to use. The calculators never ask for your email, and your numbers are never sent anywhere. If you save a recipe in the plate builder, it is stored only in this browser on this device — export a backup from the builder to keep a copy you control.
Yes. The four calculators on this page are free to use, with no signup and no trial clock, and there is no plan to put them behind a paywall. If optional premium features are ever added — for example, saved menus or price alerts — they will be new additions, and the calculators here will stay available to use.
Yes. Every calculation runs in your browser, and your numbers are not sent to a server. If you save a recipe in the plate builder, it is stored only in this browser on this device — nothing is uploaded, and you can export a backup file from the builder to keep a copy you control. Your ingredient library is stored exactly the same way: only in this browser on this device.
Plate Cost Boss is built and maintained by Joel Cummings, a Jordano's Foodservice sales rep in Santa Barbara, who spent 15+ years running high volume nightclubs and restaurants before moving into foodservice sales. The calculators are a standalone tool — the optional in-person help he offers local kitchens lives in Local Services.
Jordano's corporate chef comes to your kitchen in person. Together you work through your menu dish by dish: real plate costs, where the margin is leaking, fresh menu ideas, and product samples to taste before you commit. It costs nothing and there's no expectation attached — call or text Joel and ask for one.
No. Order what you need, when you need it — that's the point of a local supplier with a Goleta warehouse.
Food, drinks, paper and chemicals — the full operation on one truck and one invoice, instead of three suppliers with three delivery windows.
Monday through Saturday across Santa Barbara, Goleta, Montecito and Carpinteria.
Keep them — genuinely. The quote is still free and still useful: kitchens use it to check their pricing is fair. There's no obligation and nobody will chase you about it.
Text or call Joel at (805) 324-3472 and send your last two supplier invoices. He prices the same basket line by line and walks you through where the differences are — including the lines where you're already getting a good deal. Or skip the phone tag: upload an invoice on the Price Check tab and Joel will text you back.
Any business that serves food in the territory: restaurants, cafes, bars, caterers, food trucks, markets, senior living and offices with break rooms.