Labor cost percentage is your total labor spend — wages, taxes, and benefits — divided by sales for the same period. It's half of your prime cost and usually the half operators have the most control over week to week.
Enter labor cost and sales for the same period to see your percentage.
Labor cost % = total labor cost ÷ total sales × 100
A casual full-service spot does $45,000 in a week. Payroll for the week — hourly wages, the salaried kitchen manager's week, payroll taxes, and benefits — totals $14,000. Labor cost is 31.1%: inside the normal 30–35% range for the concept, but worth watching.
Cutting hours before finding out where the hours go. If the percentage is high and the team never stops moving, the schedule usually isn't the problem — prep planning or the building is. We've seen a bad layout burn two hours of labor per shift on walking alone.
Quick service typically runs 25–30%, casual full service 30–35%, and fine dining 35–40% because of higher service staffing. Judge your number against your concept, not a universal target.
Yes. Payroll taxes, workers' compensation, and benefits are real labor costs, typically adding 10–15% on top of wages. Excluding them makes your number look better than it is.
Busy isn't the same as productive. Bad kitchen layout, poor prep planning, and service bottlenecks force teams to work hard on wasted motion. Watch where the hours actually go before cutting them.
Weekly against weekly sales is the standard health check, but a daily glance during scheduling helps you catch problems in real time — especially on historically slow days.
High labor numbers are usually a symptom, not the disease. We find the cause on the floor — scheduling, prep, or layout.
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