How to cut food cost: going from 30% to 22% on purchasing

While the whole hospitality industry struggles with rising purchasing prices, one entrepreneur brought his food cost ratio down from 30% to 22 to 23.5%, without changing his menu or quality (Entree Magazine, 2026). That's not a pricing trick or cheaper ingredients, it's control over where every purchasing euro goes. For most hospitality businesses, that control is the fastest route to more margin, faster than a price increase guests notice immediately.

Key takeaways

Daan Stoter, owner of 't Olde Regthuys in Elburg (NL) and Boscafé Floor in Epe (NL), structurally brought his food cost ratio down from 30% to 22-23.5% (Entree Magazine, 2026).
The typical food cost range in Dutch hospitality sits between 28% and 32%, ranging from 22% for a pizzeria to 35-40% for fine dining (Kitchen Numbers, 2026).
Four levers determine your food cost ratio: supplier choice, portion control, menu engineering and keeping dish-level costing current.
The menu engineering matrix classifies every dish by popularity and margin: protect stars, reprice plowhorses, promote puzzles, cut dogs.
Stoter's approach relies on costing software and transparency: staff know purchasing prices and factor into the margin per dish.

Why your purchasing ratio is the biggest margin lever you have

The classic hospitality rule of thumb splits every revenue euro into four roughly equal parts: 30% purchasing, 30% fixed costs, 30% staff costs and 10% for the owner (Entree Magazine, 2026). Of those four cost categories, fixed costs are largely out of your control in the short term, and structurally changing staff costs takes time and care. Purchasing is the category where you see results fastest, because you can adjust it per supplier, per dish and even per portion without a guest noticing anything.

Raising prices is the obvious response to rising purchasing costs, but it has a ceiling: push menu prices up too often and guests feel it immediately, which can hurt the very revenue you're trying to protect. Tightening your grip on purchasing doesn't have that ceiling. Every percentage point you shave off your food cost ratio is pure margin, regardless of how many guests walk in.

The typical food cost range in Dutch hospitality sits between 28% and 32%, though it varies sharply by concept: a pizzeria or pasta place often runs around 22-26% thanks to standardized purchasing, while fine dining with premium ingredients can run 35-40% (Kitchen Numbers, 2026). If you don't know where your business sits within that range, start with the basics: food cost is the share of revenue spent on ingredient purchasing, calculated per dish, before you tackle lowering it.

The case study: how Daan Stoter went from 30% to 22%

Daan Stoter (44) started in hospitality at fourteen and built experience at snack bars, caterers and hospitality wholesalers, before using the proceeds of a sold software company (SME exit) to take over 't Olde Regthuys in Elburg (2022) and Boscafé Floor in Epe (2023) (Entree Magazine, 2026). No chef background, in other words, but years of experience on the purchasing side of hospitality, which sharpens how he looks at margin.

His own explanation for the result is refreshingly simple: "With a clear vision and strategy, and the right software, we managed to bring the purchasing ratio down to 22 to 23.5 percent" (Entree Magazine, 2026). That one sentence holds three elements: he calculates the margin per dish instead of working on gut feel, he uses costing software to do that structurally rather than occasionally, and he's transparent with staff about purchasing prices, so the whole kitchen team thinks about cost price rather than just the owner. Neither business changed its menu or cut quality, the difference sits entirely in how purchasing is managed.

The fact that 't Olde Regthuys generates roughly 80% of annual revenue during the summer season makes the approach especially relevant for seasonal hospitality businesses (Entree Magazine, 2026): with a short peak season, every percentage point of margin counts for more, because there are simply fewer weeks to make up for setbacks.

Supplier choice: the first place to save

Supplier choice is the most direct lever, but also the one entrepreneurs most often put on autopilot: once a supplier is chosen, the relationship often stays unchanged for years while prices keep creeping up. An annual comparison of your biggest purchasing categories, not your entire range, usually pays off most: focus on the five to ten products that make up the bulk of your purchasing budget.

Negotiating works better with numbers than with gut feel. Knowing your annual volume per product puts you in a stronger position at the table than just sensing that prices "feel expensive." A second supplier alongside your regular one also gives you negotiating leverage and a safety net for delivery issues, without forcing an immediate switch.

When comparing suppliers, don't just look at unit price, also check delivery frequency and minimum order quantities. A cheaper supplier that delivers twice a week instead of daily forces you into larger stock levels, which costs you again in spoilage and capital tied up in the walk-in.

Portion control without the guest noticing

Portion control is the lever entrepreneurs skip most often, because it feels like shortchanging the guest. The opposite is usually true: inconsistent portions cost you margin without the guest noticing anything positive, since a slightly oversized portion is rarely registered as extra service, while a slightly undersized one is registered as a shortfall.

Standardize with scales and fixed scoops for the ingredients that weigh heaviest in your cost price: protein sources like meat and fish, and pricier extras like cheese or nuts. A fixed portion size of, say, 180 grams instead of a range of 160 to 200 grams, stops one staff member from consistently serving more generously than another.

One caveat: a smaller portion doesn't automatically mean a proportionally lower cost price, because prep, plating and some ingredients cost roughly the same time and money for a small portion as for a large one. If you shrink a portion purely to cut costs, recalculate whether the cost ratio still holds, rather than simply adjusting the price pro rata.

Not every dish on your menu deserves equal attention, and the menu engineering matrix makes that difference visible by classifying each dish on two axes: how often it's ordered, and how much margin it generates (Toast, 2026). That produces four categories, each with its own approach.

Stars score high on both axes: popular and profitable. Protect them, give them a prominent spot on the menu and change them as little as possible. Plowhorses are popular but low margin: guests order them happily, but the cost price eats into the profit. Look for a small price increase or a cheaper recipe tweak the guest won't taste. Puzzles are profitable but obscure: they deserve better visibility on the menu, a staff recommendation or a more appealing name. Dogs score low on both axes and are the first candidates to cut: they take up menu space and fridge space without generating margin or popularity.

Run your entire menu through this matrix once a quarter, rather than only cutting dishes when stock happens to run out. A twenty-item menu where three dishes are structurally dogs costs you more in inventory management and kitchen complexity than the revenue those same three dishes bring in.

Keeping dish-level cost price current

None of the above works without an up-to-date cost price per dish. That's exactly where most hospitality businesses get stuck: the cost price gets calculated once when the menu is built, then goes unupdated for months or even years, while purchasing prices keep creeping up in the meantime.

A recipe that captures not just the ingredients but also the current purchasing price per ingredient automatically recalculates the cost price the moment a supplier adjusts their prices. Without that link, every price change has to be manually recalculated across every dish that uses the ingredient, and that's exactly the kind of manual work that causes cost prices to lag behind reality in practice.

In Horecaflix you record recipes and the cost price per ingredient centrally within recipe management, so the cost price per dish updates automatically the moment a purchasing price changes, instead of tracking that by hand per location and per dish. Running multiple locations, you also immediately see if the cost price for the same dish is out of line somewhere, for example because one location buys from a different supplier or serves a larger portion than agreed.

A plan to tackle this month

Start by measuring, not by acting: calculate your current food cost ratio over the past month and compare it to the typical range for your type of business. Without that baseline, you don't know whether a 2% gain is already a win or whether there's much more room to capture.

Next, compare your five biggest purchasing categories against at least one alternative supplier, even if you don't plan to switch: the comparison alone gives you leverage with your current supplier. In the same week, set fixed portion sizes for the ingredients that weigh heaviest in your cost price, with a scale or fixed scoop at the workstation.

Then run your entire menu through the menu engineering matrix and classify each dish as a star, plowhorse, puzzle or dog. Cut the obvious dogs and reprice the plowhorses your menu has carried unchanged for months. Finally, make sure dish-level cost price lives somewhere central, linked to current purchasing prices, so you can repeat this process in three months without starting from zero. Not sure where to start? Get in touch with Horecaflix, and we'll help you figure out which lever delivers the fastest result for your business.