Restaurant margin calculator
What your food and labour percentages are costing you, priced by the week.
What is hiding in your margin?
Food and drink, before VAT.
£2.0m
Let's aim to get you under 25%.
30%
Gross cost, with holiday and employer's NI. Let's aim for under 32%.
34%
£2,692
a week
£140,000
a year · 7.0 points
Where your numbers come from
Food cost is your purchases as a share of food sales, both ex-VAT. Take the last 13 weeks from your P&L, and use the real period, the best week flatters everyone.
Labour is the gross cost: wages plus holiday plus employer's National Insurance. The payroll headline number understates it by a fifth.
Why it is priced by the week
One point of GP on £2m of revenue is £20,000 a year. True, and easy to ignore, because annual numbers feel far away. £385 a week feels like what it is: money leaving every service. Weekly numbers get acted on.
The targets in the tool, food under 25% and labour under 32%, are where a well-run independent restaurant can operate. If you're above them, the calculator shows what closing the gap is worth in your building.
Common questions
What should food cost be in a UK restaurant?
Most UK independents run between 25% and 32%. A tightly run kitchen can hold under 25%, and every point below your current number is revenue divided by 100 back on the bottom line each year.
What should labour cost be as a percentage of sales?
Under 32% gross, meaning wages plus holiday plus employer's National Insurance. Over 35% and most independent restaurants are losing money on labour alone.
What is one GP point actually worth?
Your annual revenue divided by 100. At £2m of revenue, one point is £20,000 a year, roughly £385 a week.
What is prime cost?
Food plus labour together. A healthy UK full-service restaurant holds prime cost between 55% and 60% of revenue. Above 65% the business is working for its suppliers and its payroll.
Built by Jack Applebee. 11 years running restaurants at Borough Market and the Southbank.
The number the calculator just showed you is the work I do, inside your business, with your team.
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