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The two costs you control daily.
Prime cost — cost of goods sold plus total labor — is the single best health metric for a restaurant, because it covers the two expenses management actually controls day to day. This calculator combines your food and beverage COGS with fully-loaded labor (wages, payroll taxes, benefits) and scores the result against industry benchmarks.
Operators use it as the monthly health check — COGS plus labor against the 60–65% benchmark tells you whether the problem is the kitchen, the schedule, or neither. Lenders and franchise reviewers ask for prime cost before almost anything else.
The classic benchmark is 60–65% of sales for full-service restaurants; profitable quick-service operations often run 55–60%. Above 65% there is rarely enough left for occupancy costs, utilities, and profit — at 62% prime on $55,000 of sales, $21,000 covers everything else.
Yes. Labor is fully loaded: wages, employer payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits, and staff meals. Using gross wages alone understates labor by roughly 15–25% and makes prime cost look healthier than it is.
Whichever is further from its benchmark. Food cost problems respond to portioning, waste tracking, and menu engineering; labor problems respond to scheduling against forecast sales, not habit. Fix the bigger gap first — one point of prime cost on $55,000 of monthly sales is $550 a month.