Industry Cost Benchmarks

What food and labour cost across different kinds of food business, with every figure attributed and dated.

Full-service restaurantTable service, tipped floor staff, and the highest labour ratio of any format. Median 36.5% of sales.Quick-service restaurantCounter service, faster throughput, and a labour line several points below table service.Coffee shopBeverage COGS, a small average ticket, and a rush compressed into about two hours.Bar and pubPour cost leads, food follows, and the wet-to-dry split decides everything.PizzeriaCheap ingredients, expensive delivery, and a menu built on four or five commodities.Food truckNo rent, but commissary fees, pitch fees, fuel and a revenue line that swings wildly.BakeryCheap ingredients, expensive labour, and a product that’s worthless by Tuesday.Takeaway and ghost kitchenLow rent, no front of house, and a commission line that dominates everything.CateringPriced per head, costed per event, and staffed for a single afternoon.

Questions that cut across every format

Labour Cost Percentage by Type of RestaurantWhere each format sits, and why the gaps between them are structural.
Food Cost Percentage by Type of Food BusinessThe quoted ranges by format, and an honest account of where they come from.
Prime Cost: What It Is and What Yours Should BeFood plus labour, and the one ratio worth managing against.
Food Business Cost Benchmarks: Every Figure, With SourcesEverything on one page, each figure attributed and dated.

What a cost benchmark is for

Every food business owner ends up asking the same question sooner or later: is this normal? You look at a food cost of 34% or a labour line that has crept past a third of sales, and what you want to know is whether that’s a problem or just what running this kind of business looks like. That’s what these pages are for.

They’re organised by format because format is what drives the differences. A coffee shop and a steakhouse have almost nothing in common financially, and a benchmark that blends them tells you very little about either. So each page covers one kind of business, sets out what the published figures say, and explains which parts of your cost structure that format is actually built around.

Every figure shows where it came from

You’ll see the publisher and the publication date against each number, with a link to the original. Some come from the National Restaurant Association’s annual survey of operators; others are ranges that hospitality accountants quote as conventional practice. Both are worth knowing, and the difference between them is worth knowing too, so we label it rather than leaving you to guess.

We also date them. Wage rates move on fixed calendars and survey editions get replaced, so a benchmark page that hasn’t been touched since 2023 is quietly telling you the wrong thing. Every figure here carries the date it was last checked, and our build fails if any of them drifts more than four months without someone going back to the source.

Using one well

Treat it as orientation rather than a target. Two restaurants run with identical discipline can post food costs six points apart purely on menu mix, and a labour percentage that looks alarming is often a sales problem wearing a costume. What you’re really after is your own trend line, plus a prime cost that leaves enough room underneath for rent and profit.

When you want to work out your own figures, the restaurant calculators handle the arithmetic, and labour costs by region covers what staff cost where you trade.

The half of the ratio you can still move

Cost benchmarks are about what you spend. Bzz works on what you take: faster table turns and fewer walkaways mean more sales against the staffing you already pay for.