MarginSurge · Free tool
Restaurant Prime Cost Calculator
Prime cost is food, beverage and labor added together — the part of your P&L you can actually change. Put one period's numbers in and you will see each line against its operating target, with every gap priced in dollars per year. Nothing to sign up for, and nothing leaves your browser.
Your numbers
Targets
Edit any of these. They are commonly used operating ranges, not survey data — your own history beats all of them.
Enter your sales, purchases and labor to see where the money is going.
Heads up. You entered beverage purchases but left beverage sales blank, so the beverage line has nothing to measure against. Those purchases are still counted in your prime cost above.
Why the lines do not add up. Each target is set independently — food and beverage against their own sales, labor and prime against total sales — so the three component gaps will rarely sum to the prime gap exactly. Treat the prime line as the summary and the three above it as the diagnosis.
What this will not tell you. Prime cost targets vary by concept, region and service model, and the ones above are commonly used operating ranges rather than survey data. If your prime cost is fine and you still have no money, the problem sits below prime cost — rent as a share of sales, debt service, or simply not enough volume. Nothing on this page will find that.
Found a gap worth more than a spreadsheet?
This page gives you one reading. The workbooks let you rerun it every period and act on what it says — which is the part that actually changes the number.
Everything is calculated in your browser. No numbers are sent anywhere, stored, or seen by us. Questions, or a figure that looks wrong? info@msurgeco.com