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Business performance

Food cost & overheads

See your total monthly costs and what remains from revenue, including food, labour, rent, utilities and other overheads. Review prime cost separately against your own target.

  1. 1 Enter your numbers
  2. 2 See your results
  3. 3 Plan your next step

Your monthly numbers

Use the same month throughout. Include super and other employer costs in labour; avoid counting them twice. Enter zero for costs that do not apply. The example target of 65% is illustrative, not a verified industry benchmark.

Results update automatically when all fields contain valid figures. Indicative planning tool. Your figures are calculated in your browser and are not submitted.

Your estimate

Enter all your figures to see your results, or try an example. Results update automatically as you make changes.

ICE Group — indicative planning estimate, not a quote or guarantee.

How to use this calculator and interpret the result

Make sense of the numbers

What is prime cost?

Prime cost is food and beverage cost plus labour cost, divided by revenue. It does not include rent, utilities or the other overheads entered separately here.

How should I choose a target?

Use an agreed operating budget or a benchmark matched to your venue, accounting definitions and reporting period. This draft uses your own target, not an automated industry health rating.

What should I review next?

Check purchasing, inventory movements, waste and portion consistency alongside staffing for peak and quiet service periods. Equipment may support improvements, but these figures alone do not establish the cause of a cost issue.

Turn the breakdown into a practical review

Food & beverage

Review supplier prices, portion sizes, waste and stock movements. Use a consistent cost-of-sales figure; one large stock delivery can distort a comparison based only on purchases.

Labour & service

Include employer on-costs consistently. Review staffing against order volume and service periods before treating a higher labour percentage as a rostering problem.

Overheads & remaining revenue

Check that rent, utilities and other costs are complete and not duplicated. Remaining revenue is not net profit if finance, depreciation or other expenses have not been included.

Worked example: a restaurant month

Illustrative only: $100,000 revenue, $32,000 food and beverage costs and $35,000 labour gives a prime cost of 67%. Against an example target of 65%, that is 2 percentage points above target. After $8,000 rent, $4,000 utilities and $10,000 other overheads, $11,000 remains before tax and costs not entered.

How can I test a quieter month?

Save the current results, then enter a lower revenue figure and revise the costs you expect to change. Keep genuinely fixed costs unchanged. Recalculate to see the remaining amount and prime cost percentage. This is a scenario, not a sales forecast.

How much is one percentage point worth?

At $100,000 monthly revenue, one percentage point equals $1,000. This helps explain the scale of a difference, but does not show whether a reduction is achievable or what effect it may have on food quality and service.

What should café owners review separately?

Compare beverage and food performance in your own records, and examine the staffing needed for opening, the morning rush and quieter periods. This calculator combines monthly totals; it does not replace menu-item costing or service-level reporting.

What should restaurant owners review separately?

Separate lunch, dinner and functions in your underlying records where possible. Review menu mix, wastage, prep time and staffing alongside the monthly result. Do not assume that a cost percentage identifies the cause by itself.

Can equipment solve a cost problem?

Equipment can be relevant when a specific issue involves storage, workflow, repeatability or capacity. First identify the issue and its likely cost; then compare suitable options. The calculator does not assume an equipment purchase will improve your margin.