This calculator vs. MarginEdge
Two different jobs. MarginEdge is an account-based back-office platform that keeps a restaurant’s plate costs current by reading its supplier invoices. This page is a free, private worksheet for the read those costs are for — which dishes are carrying the menu, which are being carried, and what one price move across the plowhorses is worth over a year.
What each tool is for
MarginEdge is a restaurant back-office platform. Its central mechanism is invoice processing: you send in supplier invoices and they come back digitised line by line, so plate costs and food cost percentage move on their own as ingredient prices move. Around that it offers inventory counting, ordering, recipe and plate costing, and integrations out to point-of-sale systems and accounting software. It is an ongoing paid subscription, used through an account, and it is where a restaurant’s cost data actually lives. No plan name, price or feature list for MarginEdge is quoted anywhere on this page: the vendor’s own material is not reachable from the session that generated it, and only the well-documented category facts above are stated.
This calculator does none of that. It reads no invoices, connects to no POS, stores nothing and has no account. You give it three numbers per dish — plate food cost, menu price, and units sold over a period — and it returns the Kasavana and Smith classification for every dish, the two thresholds it used, the menu’s overall food cost percentage against a target you set, and the size of one stated price increase applied across the plowhorses, over the period and annualised. It runs free in any browser and uploads nothing you type.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| I want plate costs to stay accurate as supplier prices move, without anyone retyping an invoice. | MarginEdge, or a comparable back-office platform — reading invoices is not something this calculator does. |
| Which dishes on my menu are stars, plowhorses, puzzles or dogs? | This calculator — free, instant, private, no account. |
| What thresholds was my menu actually sorted against, and can I argue with them? | This calculator — both the popularity bar and the weighted-average margin are printed, not applied invisibly. |
| What is raising the price on my plowhorses worth over a year? | This calculator’s price-move panel, stated alongside the assumption that makes it arithmetic rather than a forecast. |
| I need inventory counts, purchase ordering, and my books to reconcile. | MarginEdge, or a comparable platform — this calculator touches none of it. |
| How does the matrix work, and where does the 70% popularity bar come from? | This calculator’s own worked explanation, with a four-dish menu run all the way through. |
| Do I need an account or a subscription to use the tool? | This calculator: no. MarginEdge is used through a paid account. |
The two are sequential more often than they are rival. A back-office platform is how a plate cost stays true; the matrix is what you do with a plate cost once you have one. An operator with neither can still run this page today off a recipe card and a sales report, which is the whole reason it is free and needs no sign-in.
This tool needs no account and no sign-in: it is a static page, the arithmetic runs in your browser, and once it has loaded it keeps working with the connection off.
Common questions
Should I use this calculator or MarginEdge?
They answer different questions, and a restaurant that runs on MarginEdge still has to make the call this calculator is for. MarginEdge is a restaurant back-office platform: you send it your supplier invoices, it digitises them line by line, and it keeps plate costs and food cost moving as prices change, with inventory counts, ordering, and links out to your POS and your accounting software. It is an account-based paid subscription and it is where a restaurant's cost data lives. This calculator holds no data at all. You type in each dish's plate food cost, its menu price and how many sold over a period, and it classifies every dish against the menu's own weighted-average contribution margin and a popularity bar set at 70% of an equal share, then prints both thresholds so you can disagree with them. A restaurant that wants plate costs to stay accurate on their own, without anyone retyping an invoice, is better served by MarginEdge or a comparable back-office platform. An operator who wants to see this menu sorted into stars, plowhorses, puzzles and dogs right now, for free, without an account, and with the arithmetic shown rather than asserted, is in the right place here.
Can MarginEdge do menu engineering?
Restaurant back-office platforms in this category, MarginEdge included, generally do report on menu and recipe profitability, because they already hold the two inputs the analysis needs: a current plate cost from your invoices and a unit count from your POS. What this page will not do is describe the exact reports in any vendor's product today, because the vendor's own documentation is not reachable from the session that generated this page and a comparison worth reading does not guess. The honest difference is not which product owns the idea, which is neither of ours: it is Kasavana and Smith's, published at Michigan State University in 1982. The difference is the cost of asking. Here it is a free page, no account, nothing uploaded, and every threshold printed. There it is inside a subscription you are already paying for, with the advantage that the plate costs feeding it are current rather than typed in from memory.
Is this page affiliated with MarginEdge?
No. This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by MarginEdge. MarginEdge is a trademark of its owner, named here only to describe what this calculator is and is not. No pricing, plan name or feature list for MarginEdge is quoted on this page, because none could be confirmed against the vendor's own material from this session, and an invented figure would be worse than an absent one.