ChefSums: Recipe Costing & GP

Roast beef dinner: how much it costs to make, per portion

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A pub Sunday roast: a beef joint roasted and rested, potatoes par-boiled and roughed before going in the fat, carrots, parsnips and cabbage, a Yorkshire pudding each and gravy off the roasting tray. Ten portions costed from wholesale and retail prices dated 7 September 2026. The beef goes into the oven raw and comes off the board smaller, and that roasting loss decides most of what the plate actually costs.

Roast beef dinner with Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and greens
Photo: Sunday roast - roast beef 1 by Jeremy Keith (Flickr user "adactio"), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons; cropped and resized. A licensed photo of the dish, not the exact costing below.
Ingredients per portion£3.45
Batch of 10£34.49
Menu price · ChefSums' sample pub menu£18.95 inc VAT (£15.79 ex) · 78% GP
Lowest price · 68% GP£12.94 inc VAT (£10.78 ex)

The menu price is the one ChefSums uses for this dish on its sample pub menu, a realistic UK menu price (also on the restaurant menu £19.96). The lowest price is the one that just reaches 68% GP, the UK food GP benchmark (UKHospitality × Christie & Co, 2022: 65.9–69% food GP across every segment). It covers the ingredients at a normal margin, not staff, rent or energy, and most cafés, pubs and takeaways charge more for simple dishes. Check what places near you charge. GP is worked out on the ex-VAT price.

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Ingredients and cost, 10 portions

IngredientPack pricePack sizeUsedCost
Beef roasting joint (topside)£10.991000 g2200 g£24.18
Potatoes (chipping)£15.4925000 g3086 g£1.91
Carrots£6.9910000 g1220 g£0.85
Parsnips£0.74500 g1176 g£1.74
Savoy cabbage£0.771 each2 each£1.54
Plain flour£12.4916000 g250 g£0.20
Eggs (medium)£3.4930 each4 each£0.47
Whole milk£1.692000 ml400 ml£0.34
Beef dripping£28.9912500 g200 g£0.46
Gravy granules£25.795000 g100 g£0.52
Horseradish sauce£1.90136 g150 g£2.10
Table salt£10.996000 g20 g£0.04
Ground black pepper£15.991000 g10 g£0.16
Batch total£34.49
Per portion (÷ 10)£3.45

Cost per line is pack price × (amount used ÷ pack size), the same sum the tool runs. Change one pack price and every line that uses it moves.

What it really costs: waste and staff time

Ingredients£3.45
Waste allowance, 5% (trim, ends, the odd one binned)£0.17
Staff time: 45 min hands-on for the batch of 10 at £12.71/hr + 25% on-cost£1.19
Food, waste and staff per portion£4.81

At the sample pub menu price (£15.79 ex VAT) that is 30% of the price, before rent, energy and everything else. Many UK sites aim to keep food plus staff (prime cost) at or under 60–65% of sales. The staff line counts hands-on prep only, not unattended cooking, and uses the April 2026 National Living Wage; put your own rate, minutes and waste in the calculator's real cost section or the prime cost calculator. Every dish side by side: the UK dish cost index.

Method

  1. Season the beef and roast on a trivet of the trim at 160 °C (320 °F) to a core of 55-60 °C (130-140 °F) for medium; rest at least 20 minutes before carving.
  2. Peel and cut the potatoes into even chunks, par-boil until the edges soften, drain and rough the surface in the empty pan.
  3. Toss the roughed potatoes in the hot dripping and roast at 200 °C (390 °F), turning once, until deep gold and crisp.
  4. Peel the carrots and parsnips, cut to matching batons, and roast or boil to order; shred the cabbage and steam or boil, drain hard.
  5. Whisk the flour, eggs and milk with a pinch of the salt to a batter the thickness of double cream; rest at least 30 minutes.
  6. Heat a little dripping hard in each Yorkshire pudding tin until smoking, pour in the batter and bake at 220 °C (430 °F) without opening the door until well risen, about 20 minutes.
  7. Deglaze the roasting tray with the gravy granules and 1.5 litres of water, scraping up the sediment; simmer to a coating consistency and season with the pepper.
  8. Carve the beef against the grain, plate with the potatoes, vegetables and a Yorkshire pudding, and serve the gravy and horseradish sauce on the side.

Costing notes

The beef is priced raw at 2.2 kg for ten portions; a 30% roasting loss is assumed, which works out at roughly 150 g of cooked beef a portion, and that yield is what decides most of the cost. Parsnips, savoy cabbage and horseradish sauce are priced at retail (Tesco) — no JJ Foodservice line was found for any of the three on the day; the potato line is the generic chipping-potato case, since JJ has no named Maris Piper line either. Beef is around seventy per cent of the plate: at £10.99 a kilo the joint alone is roughly £24.18 of the £34.49 total for ten portions, so the joint price moves this dish far more than the vegetables around it. Gravy is costed from a gravy-granules line rather than a dedicated beef stock — JJ had no beef bouillon that day either, the same gap as the cottage pie. Prices are ex-VAT, collection, and move week to week: open the recipe and put your own supplier's price in.

Prep loss is costed in: each fresh vegetable line is the weight you buy, not the prepared weight that goes in the pan. Potatoes: 2,500 g peeled is 3,086 g as bought at 81% (potato yield); Carrots: 1,000 g peeled is 1,220 g as bought at 82% (carrot yield); Parsnips: 1,000 g peeled is 1,176 g as bought at 85% (parsnip yield).

Where the prices came from

JJ Foodservice collection prices as shown on its public search pages on 7 September 2026 (delivery prices run about £1-2 a case higher). The site does not label VAT on most lines: raw food is zero-rated in the UK, while oil, vanilla and alcohol carry standard-rate VAT. Where JJ had no line that day, a Tesco retail price is used and marked. Your supplier's price is the one that matters: open the recipe and type it in.

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