Pizza Margherita Cost Calculator
Classic Neapolitan pizza with tomato, mozzarella, and basil. Average US restaurant food cost for a 12-inch pie. 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 Pizza Margherita?
About $3.96 of ingredients for a 12-inch pie at 2026 US foodservice prices, and $2.25 of that, 57%, is fresh mozzarella. The dough everyone worries about is 80 cents; what sets the margin is the cheese and how heavily it goes on.
Where the money goes
| Fresh mozzarella | 56.8% · $2.25 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pizza dough (12" ball) | 20.2% · $0.80 | |
| Tomato sauce | 15.2% · $0.60 | |
| Fresh basil leaves | 6.3% · $0.25 | |
| Olive oil | 1.5% · $0.06 |
What 40 of them return at different prices
| Your price | Food cost % | Over ingredients, each | Over ingredients, 40 |
|---|---|---|---|
| $10.50 | 37.7% | $6.54 | $261.60 |
| $14.00 US average | 28.3% | $10.04 | $401.60 |
| $17.50 | 22.6% | $13.54 | $541.60 |
Ingredients only. Labor, packaging, fuel, and stall or platform fees come out of these figures.
At a $14 menu price, the $3.96 pie runs a 28.3% food cost, in the lower half of the 25-35% most independent pizzerias work to. That leaves less slack than it looks: Margherita is the plainest pie on the menu, yet more than half of its cost is one ingredient, the cheese. Fresh mozzarella costs $0.45 an ounce, three times as much as the sauce per ounce, while dough, sauce, basil, and oil together come to $1.71.
The recipe says five ounces of cheese, and on a busy Friday nobody weighs it. Every extra ounce adds 45 cents, a little over three points of food cost, so a cook who lays on seven ounces turns a 28% pie into a 35% one, the top of the range for a pie with no meat on it. At 40 pies a day, that is $36 handed back across the counter. Pre-portioned cheese or a scale on the make line fixes it for less than one evening of over-portioning.
The other lever is the cheese itself. Low-moisture mozzarella, the block cheese of New York-style shops, costs roughly 40% less per ounce in foodservice packs, which takes about 90 cents off the pie and brings it near 22%. But it makes a different pizza: it browns and stretches where fresh mozzarella melts in pools. A menu that says Margherita promises fresh mozzarella, so most shops keep fresh for this pie, use low-moisture on everything else, and price the Margherita a dollar or two higher. At $16 the same pie runs 24.8%.