I Built a Free Food Cost Calculator (Because ToastTab Charges $300+/month)

Last month I was helping a restaurant owner figure out which menu items were actually profitable. They were using ToastTab's menu engineering module — which is buried inside a $300+/month POS system they only needed for one feature.

I closed the tab. Opened a text editor. Built something better that afternoon.

The Problem

Services like ToastTab, Micros, and other POS systems follow the same playbook:

1. Sell you a full POS system ($300+/month)
2. Bundle menu engineering as a "premium" feature
3. Make you upload your entire menu (data capture)
4. Lock PDF export and advanced analytics behind paywalls (frustration)
5. Demand contracts and onboarding calls (rage quit)

It's a subscription trap disguised as a restaurant management tool. And it preys on small restaurants and cafes — who just need to know which menu items are profitable and can't afford recurring fees.

What I Built

Food Cost Calculator — a completely free, zero-signup, browser-based menu engineering tool.

• No account. Open the page, add your menu items, classify them, download.
• No watermark. Clean, print-ready reports instantly.
• No payment. Ever. Not a "freemium" model, not a trial, just free.
• No data collection. Everything runs in your browser. Your menu data never touches a server.
• Works offline. Once loaded, you don't even need internet.

Features

• Food Cost % Calculator — enter selling price and ingredient cost for each item, get instant food cost percentage and contribution margin
• Menu Engineering Matrix — classify items into Stars (high margin, high sales), Puzzles (high margin, low sales), Plowhorses (low margin, high sales), and Dogs (low margin, low sales)
• Live Preview — see your classification update in real-time as you build your menu
• Print-ready PDF — clean tables with color-coded classifications, restaurant name, and summary stats
• Custom restaurant name — your branding, not ToastTab's

Why It Matters

Restaurant owners, cafe managers, chefs — we're all expected to pay for everything. A food cost calculator shouldn't be a cash grab. It should be a utility — like a recipe calculator or a portion scale.

The fact that this exists at all is kind of wild. You can download professional menu engineering reports, no strings attached, for zero dollars. No upsell. No "upgrade to premium." Just... done.

The Tech

• Frontend: Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS — no framework needed
• PDF generation: pdf-lib (client-side, no server)
• Hosting: Static files on nginx, Python simple HTTP server for local dev
• Deploy: One rsync, done

The whole thing is under 400 lines of code. That's it.

Open Source

It's all on GitHub — fork it, improve it, run it yourself. If you're a developer who's ever been frustrated by paywalled utilities, go build something better. It's faster than you think.

Try it: tools.jackgreen.top/food-cost-calculator-menu-engineering-tool/