Chicken Wings (10-piece) Cost Calculator
Bar-style chicken wings, 10 pieces with sauce and dip. Common pub/sports bar food cost. Prefilled with US average ingredient costs. Edit any quantity or price to match what you actually pay, and the math updates as you type.
How much does it cost to make Chicken Wings (10-piece)?
About $3.41 of ingredients for 10 wings with sauce, dip, and celery at foodservice prices, 28.4% of a $12 menu price. The wings are $2.40 of it, and the wholesale wing price has swung from over $3 a pound in 2021 to under $1 in 2026.
Where the money goes
| Chicken wings (raw) | 70.4% · $2.40 | |
|---|---|---|
| Ranch or blue cheese dip | 11.7% · $0.40 | |
| Buffalo or BBQ sauce | 10.6% · $0.36 | |
| Celery + carrot sticks | 7.3% · $0.25 |
What 60 of them return at different prices
| Your price | Food cost % | Over ingredients, each | Over ingredients, 60 |
|---|---|---|---|
| $9.00 | 37.9% | $5.59 | $335.40 |
| $12.00 US average | 28.4% | $8.59 | $515.40 |
| $15.00 | 22.7% | $11.59 | $695.40 |
Ingredients only. Labor, packaging, fuel, and stall or platform fees come out of these figures.
Ten raw wings, about a pound, cost $2.40 of the $3.41, 70.4%. The sauce is $0.36, the ranch or blue cheese $0.40, and the celery and carrot sticks $0.25. At $12 that is a 28.4% food cost, inside the 25-35% range most kitchens aim for. That 28.4% holds only at this week's wing price, and wing prices move.
Wings trade as a commodity cut of their own, and the market for them is thin. Every chicken has two wings, and growers raise birds for breast meat, so the supply barely follows wing demand, while the demand rises and falls with football. The USDA wholesale price was above $3 a pound in 2021, near $1.20 before the 2026 Super Bowl, and under $1.00 by March 2026. A kitchen pays more than that for fresh wings delivered, $2.40 a pound here, but the distributor price moves with the wholesale one. Each extra cent per ounce adds 16 cents a plate and about 1.3 points of food cost. At 25 cents an ounce instead of 15, the plate costs $5.01, 41.8% at $12. Getting back to 30% would take a $16.70 menu price.
Wing menus hedge against this in three ways. Some list wings at market price. Some sell them by the count, in 6, 10, and 20, so each size can be repriced on its own. Almost all of them offer boneless wings, which are breaded pieces of breast and follow the breast market instead; in 2021, with breast meat cheap and wings above $3 a pound, boneless was the cheaper plate by a wide margin. Bars often run wing night at a much thinner margin and make it back on the drinks, which works only if the wing price is checked before the promotion is printed. Recost the plate whenever the wing invoice changes, not once a year.