5 Costs Pakistani Home Chefs Forget to Charge For

You spent three hours making your signature biryani. You bought the chicken, the rice, the spices, the packaging. You charged PKR 800 per portion and thought you were doing well.

But were you actually making money?

Most home-based food businesses in Pakistan price their food based on ingredient cost alone — and forget the five other costs that quietly eat into every single order. Here they are.

1. Your time

This is the biggest one and the one nobody wants to talk about. Your time has a value. If you spend four hours preparing, cooking, and packaging an order of 10 portions, that is 24 minutes per portion. If you value your time at even PKR 500 per hour, that adds PKR 200 per portion in labour cost — before a single ingredient is counted.

Most home chefs charge nothing for their time because they think of cooking as something they love doing anyway. But a business that does not pay its owner is not a business — it is an expensive hobby.

2. Gas and electricity

Cooking uses gas. A lot of it. A pot of biryani for 20 people simmers for 45 minutes minimum. Your karahi needs high heat for 30 minutes. Your oven runs for an hour for baked goods.

Take your monthly gas and electricity bill and divide it by the number of dishes you make in a month. Even if cooking only accounts for 40% of your utility bill, that is real money per dish — typically PKR 20 to PKR 80 depending on what you are making.

3. Packaging

Foil trays. Plastic containers. Paper bags. Tissue paper. Labels. Tape. Rubber bands. These add up to PKR 20 to PKR 80 per order and most home chefs either forget them entirely or absorb the cost without realising it.

Write down what you use for every single order. Count every bag, every tray, every label. Add it up. You will be surprised.

4. Wastage

When you buy 1kg of chicken, you do not get 1kg of usable meat. After cleaning, trimming, and bones, you typically lose 20 to 30%. When you buy a bunch of coriander, half of it wilts before you use it. When you fry, oil gets absorbed.

Wastage is a real cost. If you buy chicken at PKR 480 per kg but only get 700g of usable meat, your effective cost per 100g is PKR 68 — not PKR 48. That difference matters at scale.

5. Delivery and transport

Whether you use a rider service, send your own person, or drop orders yourself — delivery costs money. Rider fees in Karachi and Lahore typically run PKR 100 to PKR 300 per delivery. Petrol if you drive yourself. The fee a delivery app charges if you are listed on one — usually 15 to 30% of the order value.

If you are absorbing delivery costs to seem competitive, you are subsidising your customers out of your own pocket.

How to fix this

Add all five costs to your ingredient cost before you set a price. The formula is simple:

Total cost = ingredients + packaging + gas and electricity + your time + wastage + delivery

Then set your price at 2.5x to 3x your total cost. Anything less and you are working for free.

Plate Profit on Salt Theory does all of this automatically. Enter your ingredients, your spice quantities, your operating costs, and your packaging — and it shows you your exact cost per dish and your margin across different selling platforms. It takes five minutes and it is free to try.

Try it at salttheorylab.com — no card required.