All Tools / Prime Cost
Prime Cost
See food and labor costs together. Prime cost = food + labor, your two biggest controllable costs. One can hide the other: food can look good while labor is high, and labor can look fine while food is rising.
What prime cost is: the combination of total food and beverage cost (COGS) and total labor cost, the vital signs of a restaurant. Think of it as the core pulse of the business: once prime cost passes 60–65% of total sales, there is very little left to cover rent, utilities and everything else, so it deserves attention.
Inputs
Results
—
Prime Cost %
Prime cost ($)
$0.00
Food/bev cost %
—
Labor cost %
—
Left for rent, overhead & profit
$0.00
Under 60%: healthy, with room for rent, overhead and profit.
60–65%: warning zone. Still something left over, but not much.
Over 65%: this needs attention. Food and labor are taking so much of your sales that there is very little left for rent, utilities and everything else, let alone profit.
60–65%: warning zone. Still something left over, but not much.
Over 65%: this needs attention. Food and labor are taking so much of your sales that there is very little left for rent, utilities and everything else, let alone profit.
Food cost from your invoices
Every invoice you scan is filed by its own delivery date, so a month’s food cost adds itself up. Pick a month and drop it straight into the COGS box above.
What counts toward food cost
Everything on an invoice counts by default. Untick anything you’d rather track separately: boxes and cleaning supplies aren’t food, and leaving them in pushes prime cost above the 60/65% marks, which assume food and beverage only.
Add a purchase that wasn’t scanned
Cash runs to the restaurant supply store, the farmers market, a vendor whose invoice won’t scan. Without these the month is quietly short.
Adjust for stock on hand (optional)
Purchases aren’t quite food cost. What you actually used is what you started with + what you bought − what’s left. Enter the value of stock on the shelf at month end and this corrects itself; skip it and the purchases figure stands, which is close over a few months but wobbles if a big delivery lands near a month end.
Record this month
Save the month's figure and it shows on your homepage as a health meter, so you can see prime cost trending without opening this page. Worth doing once a month, in the first few days, for the month just gone.