Do you know what your dishes cost to make this week?

If you costed your menu when you wrote it, that number has probably drifted.

Most kitchens cost a dish once, when it goes on the menu. After that the supplier prices keep moving and the menu price doesn't. A few pence on one ingredient goes unnoticed, but it comes out of every portion you sell.

Prices are set to climb again

The Food and Drink Federation's forecast, published on 9 September 2026, expects food and non-alcoholic drink inflation to reach 3.9% by December 2026 and 5.5% across 2027, peaking at 6.4% in July 2027. It points to gas prices at "more than double their February 2026 levels", and to droughts and El Niño pushing up the price of agricultural commodities.

For now the ONS has food inflation at 1.3% in September 2026, its lowest since September 2021. That average hides a lot. In the same bulletin, tomatoes, cakes and tarts, breakfast bakery products and crisps pushed prices up, while beef, chocolate and fizzy drinks pulled them down. Your costs depend on what you buy, not on the average.

These are shop prices, not what your wholesaler charges you, but the same pressures end up on your invoices.

How costs creep up without a new price list

A rise isn't always a new number on the price list. Some of the common ones:

• Seasons. Produce bought out of season usually costs more, and the change shows up gradually across a few deliveries.
• Pack sizes. The case price stays the same but there's less in the case, so the cost per kilo goes up.
• Substitutions. Your usual line is out, a different brand turns up, and it's dearer.
• Delivery charges and minimum orders. They don't appear against any one ingredient, but they're part of what each one really costs you.
• Waste and trim. If more of the veg goes in the bin, or a cheaper cut has more trim, each portion uses more than the recipe says.

None of these will make you rewrite the menu on their own. Together they're why a dish costed in the spring can be wrong by the autumn.

A worked example

Let's take Mrs Smith, for example. She runs a café and sells a chicken and leek pie with mash and greens. Each pie brings in £12.00 after VAT, and the ingredients cost £3.60 a portion. That leaves £8.40, a gross profit of 70%.

Then her chicken thigh goes from £6.00 to £6.90 a kilo. The pie uses 200g, so each portion costs 0.2 × £0.90 = £0.18 more.

• New ingredient cost: £3.60 + £0.18 = £3.78
• New gross profit: £12.00 - £3.78 = £8.22 a portion, or 68.5%

At 40 pies a week that's 40 × £0.18 = £7.20 a week, or £374.40 over 52 weeks, from one ingredient on one dish. Now add the butter in the pastry, the cream in the mash and leeks bought out of season.

To get back to 70% she'd need £3.78 ÷ 0.30 = £12.60 a pie. She could put the price up, trim the portion, swap an ingredient, or keep the price and accept the lower margin. Any of those can be right. What matters is that she's choosing, not finding out at the year end.

Make re-costing a habit

• Check when the invoice arrives. If a price doesn't match last time's, that's the moment to re-cost, not when the accountant asks.
• Start with your biggest spends. The few ingredients you spend most on are where a small rise costs the most.
• Date every price. A dish cost built on a price from the spring is closer to a guess than a figure.
• Follow the ingredient through the menu. Butter, cream and oil turn up in half the dishes, so one change can move a lot of margins at once.
• Re-cost before you reprint the menu. It's the cheapest time to change a price.

Where managero fits

managero has two optional parts for this, Menus & recipes and Dish costs, which the owner switches on in Settings. Both are included in the £18.99 a month for your first site. There's a side-by-side on the compare page.

You keep an ingredient list with your own prices and build your recipes from it, including recipes inside recipes, like a pastry used in three pies. managero works out what each dish costs per portion and the margin on it from the latest price of each ingredient. Change the price of chicken thigh once and every dish that uses it shows the new cost. If an ingredient has no price yet, the dish says "Not yet costed" rather than showing a number it can't stand behind.

Prices can be typed in, or read from your wholesaler's price file (a CSV) or a supplier invoice, as a PDF or a photo. managero suggests which of your ingredients each line matches, and nothing is saved until you approve it. A price somebody typed in by hand isn't replaced unless you tick it. Every price keeps its date, and anything older than 90 days is flagged, so you can see which dish costs need a fresh look.

Costs are only visible to the owner and to people you've given the menus permission. The rest of the team can't see them.

managero doesn't have a live feed of supplier prices. The costs are only as current as the last price file or invoice you put in, which is why the 90-day flag is there.

Sources

• Food and Drink Federation, UK food inflation forecast 2026-2027, published 9 September 2026 (3.9% by December 2026, 5.5% in 2027, peak 6.4% in July 2027; gas prices; drought and El Niño). Checked 22 October 2026.
• ONS, Consumer price inflation, UK: September 2026, released 21 October 2026 (food and non-alcoholic beverages 1.3% in the 12 months to September 2026; lowest since September 2021; items with upward and downward effects). Checked 22 October 2026.