Free tool
A multi-unit prime cost calculator that shows you the spread, not just the average. Free, no signup, no email.
Prime cost calculator
Example numbers — a group that looks healthy on paper.
Unit
Sales
Food & bev
Labor
Across 3 units
65.0%
Blended prime cost — the number most operators quote. Food 30.7%, labor 34.3%.
61.0%–76.0%
The actual range across your units — a spread of 15.0 points.
$4,510
Per period, if every unit over 65% were pulled back to it. Not a forecast — the size of the gap.
Your blended number is 65.0% — inside the healthy band. One unit is not. That is the whole problem with the blended number.
A healthy full-service prime cost is 60–65% of sales. Below 60% usually means underinvesting in the guest or the team; sustained above 65% and the model is quietly broken somewhere. Quick-service and limited-service models, with leaner labor, target lower.
A number is not a diagnosis.
The calculator tells you which unit is off. It cannot tell you why — whether it’s the schedule, the vendor, the recipe discipline, or a manager who left four months ago. That is what the Operator Diagnostic™ is for: thirty to forty-five minutes, with the Straight Read back within 48 hours.
Take the Diagnostic →What prime cost actually tells you.
Prime cost is food and beverage cost plus total labor, divided by sales. It is the one number that captures both halves of what an operator actually controls day to day. Rent is fixed. The lease was signed years ago. Prime cost is decided this week, by a schedule and an order guide.
The benchmark: a healthy full-service restaurant generally runs 60–65% of sales. The full arithmetic, worked line by line, sits in our piece on prime cost at scale — including what happens when an owner-operator works forty unpaid hours a week and the labor line quietly understates itself by four points.
Why one number across five units is the wrong number.
Every other prime cost calculator computes one restaurant. That is fine if you have one. If you have five, you already know your blended number — and the blended number is sales-weighted, which means your busiest unit sets it. A group can post a respectable 65% while one location runs 76% and bleeds every single week. The average is not wrong. It is just describing a restaurant that does not exist.
That is why this tool leads with the spread. Fifteen points between your best and worst unit is not a costing problem, it is an execution problem, and it lives in a specific building with a specific schedule. The number tells you which door to walk through.
One caution on inputs: use the same period boundaries for sales, food, and labor. A month of sales against four weeks of payroll will hand you a labor percentage that is wrong by roughly eight percent, in the flattering direction.
If the number that came back was the food side, the Food-Cost Install is the fixed-scope version of that work — recipe costing, par, ordering, and the variance tracking that holds the gain. If it was labor, the answer is usually the schedule rather than the wage, and that argument is worked here.
Common questions
What is a good prime cost for a restaurant?
A healthy full-service prime cost is 60–65% of sales — food and beverage cost plus total labor, taken together. Below 60% usually means underinvesting in the guest or the team. Sustained above 65% and the model is quietly broken somewhere. Quick-service and limited-service models, with leaner labor, target lower.
How do you calculate prime cost for a restaurant?
Add total food and beverage cost to total labor cost, then divide by sales for the same period. Labor means fully loaded — wages, salaries, payroll taxes, and benefits, including salaried managers. A unit with $18,600 food and $20,400 labor on $60,000 sales runs a 65% prime cost.
Why is my blended prime cost misleading across multiple units?
Because it is a sales-weighted average, your highest-volume unit dominates it. A group can post a healthy 65% blended prime cost while one location runs 76% and loses money every week. The average describes the group; it does not describe any single restaurant in it.
What should be included in labor cost?
Everything the labor actually costs: hourly wages, salaried management, payroll taxes, benefits, and workers’ compensation. Owner-operators who work shifts without drawing a wage should cost that time at what a salaried manager would earn — otherwise the number flatters the unit and hides a real expense.
Is a 70% prime cost bad?
For a full-service restaurant, yes — it means roughly five points of margin have gone somewhere before rent, utilities, and everything else. It is rarely one cause. It is usually a schedule built on instinct, a vendor price that moved without anyone noticing, or portioning that drifted.
You found the unit. Now find the reason.
Take the Diagnostic →