Pad Thai (Chicken) Cost Calculator
Thai restaurant favorite with rice noodles, chicken, peanuts, and tamarind sauce. Food cost per entrée portion. 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 Pad Thai (Chicken)?
About $2.49 of ingredients per plate at typical 2026 US foodservice prices, 16.6% of a $15 menu price: 90 cents of chicken, 50 cents of sauce, 48 of noodles, 30 of garnish, and 31 for the egg and sprouts. Each plate is wok-fried to order, and that cook time is what the low food cost pays for.
Where the money goes
| Chicken breast | 36.1% · $0.90 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pad thai sauce (tamarind) | 20.1% · $0.50 | |
| Rice noodles (dry) | 19.3% · $0.48 | |
| Crushed peanuts + lime + green onion | 12.0% · $0.30 | |
| Bean sprouts | 6.4% · $0.16 | |
| Egg | 6.0% · $0.15 |
What 50 of them return at different prices
| Your price | Food cost % | Over ingredients, each | Over ingredients, 50 |
|---|---|---|---|
| $11.25 | 22.1% | $8.76 | $438.00 |
| $15.00 US average | 16.6% | $12.51 | $625.50 |
| $18.75 | 13.3% | $16.26 | $813.00 |
Ingredients only. Labor, packaging, fuel, and stall or platform fees come out of these figures.
Pad thai is one of the lowest food-cost entrées on a Thai menu. The 5 oz of chicken breast is the biggest line, more than a third of the plate: $0.90, 36.1%. The tamarind sauce is $0.50, the 4 oz of dry rice noodles $0.48, the crushed peanuts, lime, and green onion $0.30, the bean sprouts $0.16, and the egg $0.15. At a $15 menu price that is a 16.6% food cost, well below the 25-30% restaurants usually aim for on an entrée. That margin pays for the cook's time at the wok.
Pad thai cannot be cooked ahead. Each order goes through the wok on its own: soaked noodles, egg, chicken, and sauce tossed over high heat for three to four minutes, two portions at most per pan before the noodles clump and steam instead of frying. A curry is made by the pot and ladled out through service; here the wok station decides how many plates leave the kitchen on a busy night, and every plate carries a few minutes of a cook's wage on top of the $2.49. At 50 plates a day the return table above shows $625.50 a day above ingredient cost at $15, and the wok hours, gas, and oil come out of that.
The ingredient cost drifts inside the wok too, in ways a recipe card hides. Rice noodles soaked before service roughly double in weight, so the 4 oz of dry noodles goes in as about 8 oz wet, and a cook grabbing by the handful rarely lands on it. The sauce reduces fast over high heat and gets topped up by eye. One extra ounce of dry noodles (12 cents) and one of sauce (25 cents) take the plate to $2.86 and 19.1%, or $18.50 a day at 50 plates. Soaked noodles weighed into portion containers before service and a 2 oz ladle for the sauce keep each plate on the recipe. A house sauce of tamarind, fish sauce, and palm sugar, made in a weekly batch, usually costs less per ounce than bottled pad thai sauce and gives the dish a taste of its own.