Discount and Promo Profit Calculator

A discount trades margin for volume — and it's easy to feel the trade working (busier service, a longer queue) without checking whether it's actually paying. This calculator turns "extra covers" into the one number that answers it: how much more volume does this specific discount need before it earns its keep?

The formula, in the open

• Discounted price = normal price × (1 − discount %).
• Profit per cover before/after = price minus cost, at the normal price and at the discounted price.
• Extra covers needed to break even = the % MORE volume needed so the lower profit-per-cover still adds up to the same total profit as before — because that ratio doesn't depend on how many covers you started with, you don't need to know your baseline volume to use it.
• We compare that break-even % against the extra-covers % you actually expect the promotion to bring, and say plainly whether it clears the bar.

A worked example

A ₹300 dish costing ₹180 (₹120 profit) discounted 20% sells at ₹240 (₹60 profit) — HALF the margin. Halving margin means covers must roughly DOUBLE — the break-even lift is 100% more volume. If you're only expecting a 25% lift from the promotion, it does not earn its keep as structured: you'd need four times the volume increase you're actually banking on.

What moves the number

A shallower discount or a lower-cost dish both shrink the margin cut, which shrinks the volume needed to recover it — the arithmetic punishes deep discounts on already-thin margins hardest. If a promotion DOES clear the bar and brings real extra covers, prep volumes rise with it — the recipe batch scaling calculator turns that into scaled ingredient quantities.

Try it

Enter your own numbers below. The defaults are the worked example — replace them with yours.