Why packaging belongs in menu costing
If it leaves your kitchen with the order, it is a cost of the sale. Boxes, cups, lids, and bags add up to real money across a month.
Cafes, bakeries, takeaway, and delivery kitchens all sell packaging with every order, knowingly or not.
Treat boxes, cups, lids, sleeves, bags, cutlery, sauce pots, and labels as first-class costs. Anything that leaves with the order was paid for by that sale.
Packaging cost per order = sum of every item that leaves the kitchen with it
The same drink, two channels
An iced latte sold in the room goes into a glass that comes back, so its packaging cost is $0.00. The same drink to go carries a stack:
- 16 oz cup: $0.16
- Lid: $0.04
- Sleeve: $0.03
- Straw: $0.02
Packaging cost to go = $0.25
That is $0.25 of margin that exists on one channel and not the other, on a drink whose recipe is identical either way. It is also why packaging is held apart from the recipe cost rather than baked into it: one dish, one recipe figure, and a packaging figure that changes with how it is sold.
Small per piece is the whole problem
A 16 oz cup at $0.16 is harmless once. At 200 cups a day it is $960 a month, and the full $0.25 stack is $1,500 a month. Neither number ever appears on an invoice line called "margin", which is exactly why gut-feel pricing misses it.
Frequently asked questions
- Does packaging change my food cost percentage?
- Not in Dishboard. Cost per portion and food cost % are based on the recipe itself, and packaging is held separately so it can be applied per channel.
- Who pays for the packaging on a delivery order, me or the platform?
- You do. Commission is charged on the order value and the packaging comes out of what is left, which is why a delivery order needs both the fee and the box subtracted before you know what it left you.
- Should I charge customers for packaging separately?
- You can, and many delivery menus do it through a slightly higher per-channel price rather than a visible line item. Either way the cost has to be somewhere in the price, because it is already somewhere in your bank account.
Cost the dish with the packaging in it, the way the customer actually receives it.
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