Five Things Camps Get Wrong About Food Costing

Most camps and outdoor programs track food cost as a single number: dollars per person per day. It’s a fine metric for a board report. It’s a terrible metric for actually running a kitchen, because it hides where the money goes.

1. Not separating consumables from staples

Oil, spices, coffee, and condiments get bought in bulk and used across many trips. If you charge the whole case to the trip that happened to buy it, your costs swing wildly from week to week. Amortize staples across the season instead.

2. Costing the plan but not the waste

A menu that costs $9 a day on paper can cost $12 in practice if a third of the salad greens come back wilted. Track what returns from the field. It usually points at two or three meals that are consistently over-planned.

3. Using last year’s prices

Protein and dairy prices move. If your recipe costs were entered once in 2023, they’re fiction now. Re-cost your top twenty ingredients at the start of every season; those twenty usually drive most of the budget.

4. Ignoring packaging units

You need 46 tortillas. They come in packs of 10. You’re buying 50, and the cost of those four extra tortillas belongs in your estimate, not as a surprise at checkout.

5. Treating every trip as unique

Programs that run the same trip repeatedly should know its cost to the dollar by the third run. If you don’t, it’s because the menu is being rebuilt from scratch each time. Templates fix this.