Food Costing Combo Choices (The Keg Case Study) | Highest vs Average vs Sales Mix

When your menu has “choice of” options (starter salad choices, side choices, modifiers), your true food cost can swing a lot—especially when the options have very different costs. In this video, I break down 3 practical ways to cost out combos and build-your-own plates: 1) Cost at the highest possible option (protects margin, least accurate) 2) Cost using a simple average of options (better, still imperfect) 3) Cost using ..... Check near the end of the video. I’ll walk through a real example based on a steak plate with: Choice of starter salad (Caesar vs mixed greens) Choice of 6 sides (with big cost variance) Then I’ll show how to use real customer purchasing behaviour (your modifier totals from POS reports) to create a weighted average cost that reflects what guests actually choose—so your menu pricing and margin targets are based on reality. If you sell higher-volume items, run features, or track profitability closely, this method is a game-changer. Tools used: FoodCostChef Calculator (FCCC) https://foodcostchef.com Subscribe for more food costing, menu engineering, and restaurant profitability systems.