Pho Bo (Beef Pho) Cost Calculator
Vietnamese rice noodle soup with beef broth, rare beef, and herbs. Pho shop entrée 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 Pho Bo (Beef Pho)?
About $3.83 of ingredients per bowl at foodservice prices, 29.5% of a $13 menu price. The sliced beef is the biggest line at $1.60 and the broth next at $1.28. A home cook pays about the same for the beef, but whole spice packs spread over a single pot make each bowl dearer.
Where the money goes
| Sliced beef (eye of round) | 41.8% · $1.60 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pho beef broth | 33.4% · $1.28 | |
| Rice noodles (dry) | 10.4% · $0.40 | |
| Bean sprouts + basil + lime | 6.5% · $0.25 | |
| Onion + scallion + cilantro | 5.2% · $0.20 | |
| Hoisin + sriracha | 2.6% · $0.10 |
What 100 of them return at different prices
| Your price | Food cost % | Over ingredients, each | Over ingredients, 100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| $9.75 | 39.3% | $5.92 | $592.00 |
| $13.00 US average | 29.5% | $9.17 | $917.00 |
| $16.25 | 23.6% | $12.42 | $1242.00 |
Ingredients only. Labor, packaging, fuel, and stall or platform fees come out of these figures.
The rare beef is the biggest line: four ounces of thinly sliced eye of round at 40 cents an ounce come to $1.60, 41.8% of the cost. Sixteen ounces of broth at 8 cents an ounce add $1.28 (33.4%), so beef and broth together are three quarters of the bowl. The rest is small: 40 cents of dry rice noodles (10.4%), 25 cents for the plate of bean sprouts, Thai basil, and lime (6.5%), 20 cents of onion, scallion, and cilantro, and 10 cents of hoisin and sriracha. At a $13 menu price that is a 29.5% food cost. The beef goes into the bowl raw and is cooked by the hot broth, so the weight on the scale is the weight the customer gets, with no cooking loss to account for. Each ounce of beef adds about 3.1 percentage points of food cost: cutting to three ounces brings the bowl to $3.43, a 26.4% food cost. Each extra ounce of broth adds about 0.6 points.
The broth is the line that is easiest to cost wrong, because a pho pot makes two products. Brisket simmers in the broth for hours and is then sliced as a topping, so its price belongs either to the broth or to the bowls that carry it, not both. Bones, charred onion, ginger, and spices are the cheap part of the pot. In a pho shop cost breakdown published on lovingpho.com (2019 prices), 25 lb of knuckle bones cost $19.75, while 20 lb of brisket cost $91.80, three quarters of the $121.67 pot on its own. The pot made 21 gallons, enough for 112 bowls of 24 oz, which works out to about 4.5 cents an ounce. Brisket has moved since: the USDA weekly grocery feature average was $6.48 a pound in late September 2025, and in late September 2026 it spiked from $5.29 to $11.05 in a single week. With brisket at the September 2025 average of $6.48 and knuckle bones at $3 a pound, the same pot comes to about 8 cents an ounce. This page uses that 8 cents, so the broth cost here includes the brisket: one broth price for every bowl, which is what the $3.83 assumes. With brisket at $11.05 the broth would be about 11 cents, which is why brisket is the line to re-check first. With its cost left in the broth, the brisket is paid for by a rare-beef bowl that never gets it, while a brisket bowl gets it free on paper. Weigh the brisket when it comes out of the pot and charge it to the bowls that carry it, and the broth drops to about 3.2 cents an ounce, or 51 cents a bowl. The rare-beef bowl costed here then falls from $3.83 to $3.06, a 23.5% food cost.
The herb plate comes with the bowl at no charge and is refilled on request, and it is easy to leave off the recipe card. The first plate of sprouts, basil, and lime is 25 cents, 1.9 points of food cost. A second plate takes the bowl from $3.83 to $4.08, a 31.4% food cost. Hoisin and sriracha sit on every table, and the 10 cents here is an average: some customers use none, others squeeze in a quarter of the bottle. Shops rarely charge for the extra plate or the sauces, which is why a pho shop's real food cost runs a point or two above the recipe card. At home, the beef costs about what a shop pays: whole Choice eye of round is $6.24 a pound at Sam's Club, 39 cents an ounce. The broth is where home cooking loses its scale: whole packs of star anise, cinnamon, cloves, fish sauce, and rock sugar are spread over one pot of a few quarts instead of a hundred bowls, and the pot still simmers 3 to 6 hours.