Restaurant / Bar

Your prime cost is the whole game

Full-service restaurants live or die on the gap between what food and labor should cost and what they actually cost. Most operators read that number monthly, from a bookkeeper, six weeks late.

Where it goes

Blended P&L: Running the bar and the kitchen as one number lets a profitable bar hide a kitchen that is losing money on every cover.
Pour variance: Unmanaged bars leak 15–20% of liquor cost to over-pouring, comps, and waste. It never shows up on a monthly statement.
Menu drift: Prices set against last year's food costs, on items nobody has recosted since they went on the menu.

Reference ranges

Industry data

Metric	Healthy	Most sit at
Prime cost	55–60%	65–67%▼
Food COGS	28–32%	34–38%▼
Beverage COGS	18–24%	22–26%
Net margin	6–9%	3–5%▼

Where your business sits against these is what the audit measures.

The one thing to do next

Fifteen minutes on your numbers.

Book the call and you'll get six questions to answer first, so the time goes to your numbers instead of background.

Book a Profit Audit