Break-Even Calculator for Restaurants
Built by Najeeb · last updated August 13, 2026 · checked against our testing process
Your restaurant numbers
Results
Restaurant Break-Even: What to Enter
- Fixed costs: rent, salaried staff, utilities, insurance, POS system, delivery platform fees.
- Average check: revenue per cover including drinks.
- Variable cost per cover: food cost + hourly server share + card processing.
Full-service restaurants typically target food cost at 28–32% of revenue. With a $45 average cover, $15 variable cost, and $30,000 monthly fixed costs, you need 1,000 covers per month to break even: about 33 per day.
Last reviewed: July 25, 2026. Industry benchmarks from National Restaurant Association 2024 report.
Related: all finance calculators
How to use the restaurant break-even calculator
- Enter monthly fixed costs: rent or mortgage, salaried kitchen and management staff, insurance, base utilities, licenses, POS.
- Enter average ticket per cover: total revenue ÷ number of guests served. Include drinks and dessert attach.
- Enter cost per cover: plate food cost plus per-guest share of hourly labor and disposables. Most full-service spots land at 30–45% of ticket.
- Set a target profit: the covers-for-profit figure is your real operating goal.
- Convert to seatings: daily covers ÷ seats ÷ turns tells you what occupancy you actually need.
How many covers does a restaurant need to break even?
A full-service restaurant with $28,000 in monthly fixed costs, a $24 average ticket, and $8 in per-cover costs breaks even at 1,750 covers a month: about 58 guests a day. For a 40-seat room, that's 1.5 turns a day, every day. This calculator turns your rent, staffing, and menu pricing into that one operational number.
Restaurant break-even: covers, not dollars
Industry P&Ls talk in percentages, but service teams execute in covers. Working out break-even per cover, guests through the door, gives managers a target they can act on nightly. Contribution margin per cover is your average ticket minus the true cost of serving one guest: plated food cost, that guest's share of hourly front-of-house labor, and disposables.
The fixed-cost trap
Restaurants carry the heaviest fixed base in food service: prime-location rent, salaried chefs and managers, equipment leases, insurance. That's why the same menu that thrives in a $12,000/mo space dies in a $30,000/mo one: break-even covers scale directly with rent. Before signing a lease, run it here: new rent in, and see what daily cover count it demands. If the number exceeds seats × realistic turns, the lease fails before you open.
Prime cost and this calculator
Operators track prime cost (food + all labor) at a target of 55–65% of sales. This calculator splits it differently: salaried labor sits in fixed, hourly in per-cover variable. Both views agree at the bottom line, but break-even covers translate into staffing plans and reservation targets in a way percentages never do.
Delivery orders don't have the same margin as dine-in
The single cost-per-cover field above works fine for a dine-in-only room, but most restaurants now run a real delivery mix through DoorDash, Uber Eats, or a similar platform, and those orders carry a commission that dine-in never sees, commonly 15 to 30 percent of the ticket taken straight off the top before any food cost is even counted.
Blending delivery and dine-in into one cost-per-cover number hides which side of the business is actually profitable. A $24 dine-in ticket at $8 cost has a healthy $16 contribution margin. The same $24 order through a delivery app at 25% commission loses $6 to the platform before food cost is subtracted, leaving something closer to $10, a meaningfully thinner cushion against the same fixed costs.
If delivery is a real share of revenue, run this calculator twice, once with a dine-in-only cost per cover and once with platform commission added to the delivery side, rather than one blended average that overstates how healthy the delivery channel actually is.
Related tools
Lighter formats break even far lower: compare the coffee shop and food truck calculators. Planning a fit-out or renovation, estimate it with the construction cost estimator. The general break-even calculator explains contribution margin from first principles. Covers do not fill themselves, so it is worth checking whether the marketing that brings people through the door returns more than it costs.
Check your inputs before you trust the number
A break-even figure is only as good as the three numbers feeding it, and in full service two of them are usually off.
Rent. Occupancy cost normally lands between 6% and 10% of sales. Past about 12% the covers you need stop being reachable in the seats you have, and no menu change fixes it. If your rent is fixed and your break-even covers exceed seats times realistic turns, the room is too expensive for the concept rather than the concept being wrong.
Food cost. Plated cost normally runs 28% to 35% of menu price. If you entered a per-cover cost below a quarter of your average ticket, you have probably left out something that scales with guests: disposables, condiments, waste, comps and staff meals all belong there.
Turns. Most full-service rooms achieve 1.5 to 2.5 turns on a good day, not 3. Divide your break-even covers by your seat count and be honest about whether the answer describes a Saturday or a Tuesday.
What this calculator does not account for
The tool solves for a single break-even point under static assumptions. It does not model seasonality: a restaurant running 60% occupancy in summer and 30% in January has two different break-even covers, not one. It also excludes debt service. A $400,000 SBA 7(a) loan at 10.5% over 10 years carries roughly $5,400/month in principal and interest - that obligation sits outside your P&L operating costs but still requires cash. Run the calculator once with and once without your loan payment to see the real floor.
Margin benchmarks by segment
Full-service restaurants average 3–9% net profit margin on revenue, per the National Restaurant Association. Fast-casual runs 6–9%. Fine dining often falls below 5% despite higher check averages because labor and occupancy scale up with the format. A food cost ratio above 35% signals immediate menu or supplier renegotiation. Prime cost (food plus labor) above 65% of revenue is the standard red-line threshold - operators above it rarely survive a slow quarter. For a leaner format, see the break-even calculator for food trucks, where prime cost targets run 5–8 points tighter.
Adjusting for day-part splits
Lunch and dinner rarely share the same average check. A restaurant doing $14 lunch covers and $38 dinner covers with a 40/60 day-part split has a blended average check of roughly $28.40. Feeding that blended figure into the calculator gives a more accurate daily cover target than using dinner revenue alone. Recalculate whenever a menu price change shifts the blended check by more than $2.
Treat this as a starting point. These figures are an estimate to help you plan. Your real numbers depend on your own costs, rates and terms, so check them against your actual books before you price anything on the result.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a good break-even point for a restaurant?
There's no universal number: it's a function of rent and ticket. The health check: break-even covers should be comfortably below seats × realistic daily turns. Needing 90% occupancy every day to break even means the model, not the marketing, is broken.
Should hourly staff be fixed or variable cost?
Split them. Salaried kitchen and management are fixed. Hourly servers and line cooks scheduled against forecast are closer to variable: estimate their cost per cover (hourly labor for a shift ÷ covers served).
What should cost per cover include?
Plate food cost (typically 28–35% of ticket), per-guest hourly labor share, disposables, and card fees. Exclude rent, salaries, and utilities: those are fixed.
How do I raise my average ticket without raising menu prices?
Attach rate: drinks, starters, dessert. Moving beverage attach from 40% to 60% adds $1.50–$2.50 per cover at near-90% margin: often worth more than a price increase, with zero guest pushback.
Does this work for QSR / fast casual?
Yes: use average order value as the ticket and per-order costs. Fixed costs are lower and tickets smaller, so expect a higher order count but much lower revenue break-even.