Coffee Shop Cost Per Cup Calculator

About this calculator

Cost per cup is the core unit-economics number behind a coffee shop’s menu pricing: it adds up the direct ingredient cost of one drink — the grams of beans at your roaster’s price per kilogram, the milk by volume, plus packaging like the cup, lid, and sleeve — to get a total cost of goods sold (COGS) for that single item. Café owners track this per drink because bean and dairy costs fluctuate and a recipe that was profitable last quarter can quietly stop being one.

Once the per-cup cost is known, this calculator also suggests a retail price built on a 70% gross margin target — a common benchmark in specialty coffee, calculated as cost ÷ (1 − 0.70) — since coffee shops typically need that kind of margin on beverages to cover labor, rent, and equipment costs that a low-margin item can’t absorb.