The #1 KPI in restaurant operations. Enter your sales, food cost, and labor — see your prime cost instantly with benchmarks and actionable guidance.
Choose your entry mode and restaurant segment
Your net sales and total food & beverage costs for the period
Your total labor cost for the period — all wages, salaries, taxes, and benefits combined
Track prime cost over time, get weekly alerts, and see exactly which lever to pull — all from one dashboard built for restaurant operators.
Prime cost is the sum of your two largest controllable expenses: Cost of Goods Sold (food & beverage) and total labor. It’s expressed as a percentage of net sales and is the single most important profitability metric in restaurant operations.
Formula: (COGS + Total Labor) ÷ Net Sales × 100
Prime cost typically accounts for 55–70% of every dollar a restaurant earns. A 1-point reduction in prime cost on $50,000/week in sales saves $500/week — $26,000/year. Most operators don’t track it weekly, so problems compound for weeks before they surface on a monthly P&L.
It depends on your segment. Quick service runs 55–60%, casual dining 60–65%, fine dining 62–68%, and bars 50–55%. The key is consistency: a restaurant running 63% every week is healthier than one swinging between 55% and 72%.
Food cost is just one component of prime cost. Food cost percentage equals food and beverage costs divided by net sales. Prime cost adds total labor on top: (COGS + labor) / net sales. You can have a great food cost and still have a terrible prime cost if labor is out of control, which is why prime cost is the more complete metric.
Yes — best practice includes all labor: hourly wages, salaried managers, payroll taxes, benefits, and workers comp. Some operators exclude management salaries to isolate controllable labor, but including them gives a more accurate picture of true operating cost. Our detailed mode lets you toggle management on or off to see the impact.
Weekly. Monthly is too slow — by the time you see a bad month, you’ve already lost 4+ weeks of margin. Weekly tracking lets you spot trends early and make adjustments before small problems become expensive ones. Set a recurring time each week (e.g., Monday morning) to log last week’s numbers.
There are three levers: (1) Increase sales without proportionally increasing costs — upselling, happy hours, catering. (2) Reduce COGS through better purchasing, portion control, menu engineering, and waste reduction. (3) Reduce labor through smarter scheduling, cross-training, and reducing overtime. Most operators find the biggest wins in scheduling and portion control.
Always use net sales: total revenue after discounts, comps, voids, and employee meals. Do not include sales tax. Using gross sales inflates your denominator and makes your prime cost look artificially low, which masks the real picture.