Yield Percentage

Yield percentage tells you how much of the original food product is still usable after trimming, peeling, deboning, or other preparation losses. It works by comparing the edible mass to the mass you bought, then converting that fraction into a percent so you can easily see the usable portion of the total. A higher yield means less waste and a lower true cost per usable amount.

Use this in food service, recipe costing, and kitchen inventory when you need to estimate how much usable product you will get from raw ingredients. It is especially helpful for produce, meats, and seafood that require cleaning or trimming before cooking.

• Using the trimmed waste weight instead of the edible weight in the numerator
• Forgetting to multiply by 100, which leaves the answer as a decimal instead of a percent
• Mixing units, such as using grams for one value and kilograms for the other