Sales is three numbers multiplied together
A month of sales feels like something that happens to you. Broken apart it is seats times turns times average check times days open. Twenty-four seats at 2.5 turns is 60 covers a day; at a $15 check that is $900 a day, and 26 days of it is $23,400. Add a fifth of the total coming through delivery and the month lands near $29,250.
The reason to keep it in that form is that "grow sales ten percent" is not an instruction anyone can act on, while "six more covers a day" or "a dollar fifty on the average check" is. The two routes are not equally hard either. Six more covers means more product, more labour hours and more of everything variable. A dollar fifty on the check is almost pure contribution, which is why the check average is usually where the money is hiding.
Food cost is one line, and it is smaller than the argument about it
Food cost percentage is ingredient cost divided by menu price, at the plate level and again at the whole-month level. A drink you sell for $4.50 with $1.20 of ingredients in it runs a 26.7 percent food cost. Across the month it is purchases divided by sales, corrected for any large swing in inventory.
What it does not tell you is whether the place works. "Keep food cost under thirty percent" says nothing on its own, because the two lines that actually decide the month are labour and rent, and neither appears in it. A cafe at 24 percent food cost with rent at a fifth of sales loses money. A kitchen running 38 percent on a menu built around one expensive protein can be fine if the check average and the labour hours are in proportion. Food cost is worth tracking because it moves fast and is easy to lose control of, not because a particular number is a verdict.
The plate-level version is the one that changes decisions. Work out the cost of the recipe as you actually make it, including trim loss and the garnish, then look at what the item sells for. The margin calculator does that arithmetic for a single item and will also work backwards from a target.
Fixed, variable, and the only reason break-even exists
Food, delivery commission and card processing happen because a sale happened. Rent, salaried staff, insurance and your own pay happen anyway. Everything left of a dollar after the variable lines is contribution, and break-even is where the accumulated contribution equals the fixed pile. At 30 percent food cost and about seven points of blended fees, contribution is roughly 63 cents; $18,000 of fixed cost then needs around $28,600 of sales.
Two things follow. Removing $1,000 of fixed cost lowers the required sales by about $1,600, so the fixed side is the higher-leverage place to work. And a one-point rise in food cost moves break-even by more than most people expect, which is how a menu that was fine last year is quietly below water after a year of supplier increases. The general version of this arithmetic, with a margin of safety, is on the break-even calculator.
Delivery commission is a rate on a different base
Card processing takes a couple of points off a dine-in check. Marketplace delivery takes commission, then payment processing, then whatever share of the driver fee and the promotional discount you agreed to fund. The headline commission is rarely the effective rate; the number to put in the field is total charges on the statement divided by the gross delivery sales for the same period.
The mix table on this page holds sales flat and moves only the channel, which makes delivery look purely subtractive. That is the wrong picture for most operators, because off-premise orders often land in hours the dining room could not have filled and ride on staff who are already there. It becomes the right picture when discounting and paid placement climb, because then the effective rate rises against sales that were going to happen anyway.
Paying yourself, and why it changes the answer
Most restaurant profit arithmetic leaves the owner off the payroll line. The profit that comes out is then a mix of return on the business and wages for a sixty-hour week, and the two cannot be separated afterwards. Putting your own pay in as a cost splits them: the profit line becomes the return the business generates, and the add-back line becomes the money that reaches your household.
Both figures are useful and they answer different questions. If the operating profit is near zero with your pay counted, the business is a job — which may be exactly what you wanted, but it is worth knowing that is what you own. The employer-side arithmetic for anyone else you put on that line is on the employee cost calculator.
What this leaves out
Operating profit is before income tax, before depreciation on the build-out and the equipment, and before loan interest and principal. Sales tax is not a cost at all — it is collected on top of the check and held until the filing deadline, and because rates are set by states and by cities and counties on top of that, there is no single figure this page could apply for you. The practical effect is that the account balance overstates the month for most of the quarter and then corrects in one payment.
Seasonality is not modelled either. This is one average month. If half your year is summer, run a peak month and a slow month separately and look at the pair rather than the average, because the average month describes a month that never happens. And the food figure is a blend across a menu whose mix changes weekly; a week where the cheap item sells has a different contribution margin from the week you planned for. If your range spans very different margins, run the parts separately. Where the ingredient money is sitting rather than moving is a separate question, handled by the inventory turnover calculator and, for the ordering rhythm itself, the inventory order calculator.
Questions people ask
We are delivery and takeout only, with no seats. Can I still use this?
Put 1 in the seats field and your daily order count in the turns field, which makes seats times turns equal orders per day, and set the average check to the average order value. Then push the delivery share up to 90 percent, which is the cap here, so almost all of the fee arithmetic runs at the commission rate rather than the card rate. The remaining ten percent behaves as if it were walk-in pickup paid on a card, which for most ghost-kitchen operations is close enough to be harmless. Everything else on the page — fixed costs, break-even, contribution — works the same way.
How do I work out my food cost percentage if inventory moved a lot?
Purchases divided by sales is only right when opening and closing inventory are similar. The corrected version is opening inventory plus purchases minus closing inventory, divided by sales. A month where you stocked up ahead of a holiday will otherwise show a food cost several points higher than the food you actually served, and the following month will show one that is too low. Two or three months averaged together smooths it out if you do not count inventory formally.
The calculator shows a profit but there is no money in the account. Why?
Three usual causes, and they are all outside operating profit. Sales tax collected sits in the balance and leaves in one payment at the filing deadline. Loan principal is not an expense, so it never appears in the profit line, but it leaves the account every month — only the interest is a cost. And card settlement lands a day or several days after the sale while supplier invoices come due on their own schedule, so a profitable month can still be short of cash mid-cycle. Profit and cash are different measurements and a business can run out of the second while producing the first.
Should I compare my cost percentages against industry averages?
Carefully, and mostly not. Published averages blend fast casual with fine dining, owned property with leased, markets where rent is eight percent of sales with markets where it is twenty. A ratio pulled out of that blend does not describe your site, and the lines interact — a high food cost with fast turns can beat a low one with a heavy lease. The comparison that carries information is against your own previous months, same page, same definitions, because then the only thing that changed is you.
What should I put in for my own pay?
What it would cost to hire someone to do the hours you actually work. If you are working the line, that is a cook's wage for those hours. If you are also doing ordering, scheduling, payroll and the books, that is closer to a manager's salary. There is no correct figure, only a consistent one — pick it, leave it, and watch how the profit line moves over the year. Setting it to zero is allowed and the calculator will run, but the profit it reports then includes your wages and is not comparable to any month where you did enter a figure.