financial management information system - National Food Service ...

F INANCIAL A NALYSIS AND P ROGRAM E VALUATION S ECTION 4To calculate total costs for producing a meal, the school foodservice administrator should divide the sum of expenditures inall categories for the period being analyzed by the total meal equivalents served in that period.Meal Cost= Total ExpendituresTotal Lunches + Meal EquivalentsMeal cost can be calculated for any accounting period the school foodservice administrator wishes to analyze. The examplebelow provides an explanation of the total process for calculating the cost to produce a meal for a given period of time.Example: In ABC Elementary School, foodservice staff members concerned about plate costs in their school decided toanalyze meal costs on a daily basis. On this particular day, the school foodservice operation served 200 student lunches,23 adult lunches, 96 breakfasts, 54 snacks in the afterschool care program, and had $110.00 in a la carte and extra milksales. There were $619.55 in expenditures for the day. Using the following steps, the staff calculated the cost per mealbased on the number of meal equivalents served for the day.Step 1 - Determine the expenditures for period.Food costs (includes commodities) $301.50Labor costs 179.50Benefit costs 60.50General supplies/paper supplies 36.60Overhead costs (prorated as a daily rate based on anaverage monthly cost) 41.45Total costs for the day $619.55Note: Calculations made at the school level serve as a tool for evaluating expenditures at that site. They may not necessarilyreflect all costs associated with the district’s school foodservice operation.Step 2 - Calculate all meals and meal equivalents.After the total expenditures were calculated, the number of meal equivalents for each type of service was determined. Usingthe meal conversion formulas presented in this section, the total number of meals and meal equivalents were calculated asfollows:Breakfasts Meal Equivalents = Number of Breakfasts Served x conversion factor96 x .66= 63Snack Meal Equivalents = Afterschool Care Snacks Served3a la carte Meal Equivalents = a la carte Sales RevenueFederal Free Lunch Reimbursement + Commodity Value543= 18$110$2.24 + .1725 (2.4125)= 45.59 or 46Lunches = Student lunches + Adult Lunches200 + 23= 22369N ATIONAL F OOD S ERVICE M ANAGEMENT I NSTITUTE