Restaurant Break-Even Calculator
Every restaurant has a number: the daily covers that separate losing money from making it. Enter your fixed costs, variable cost percentage, and average check to find your break-even revenue, covers per month, and the daily target your team should chase. Everything updates live.
Rent, insurance, base salaries, loan payments, licenses.
Food + hourly labor + packaging + card fees, as % of revenue. 60–70% is typical.
Average spend per guest.
One number runs the whole operation
Most operators feel break-even intuitively, "we need a decent Friday", but intuition doesn't set staffing levels or marketing budgets. The actual number does. Once you know you need 96 covers a day at a $24 check, every decision gets a yardstick: a promotion that drives 20 extra covers is worth exactly what 20 covers contribute, and a slow Tuesday isn't a vibe, it's a 40-cover shortfall with a name on it. Break-even turns anxiety into arithmetic.
Worked example: $28,000 in monthly fixed costs with variable costs at 65% of sales. Contribution margin is 35%, so break-even revenue is $28,000 ÷ 0.35 = $80,000 per month. At a $24 average check, that's 3,333 covers per month: about 111 per day across a 30-day month, or $2,667 in daily revenue. If the dining room seats 60 and turns twice at dinner plus a modest lunch, 111 covers is achievable but not comfortable: which tells you the real levers are raising the average check or trimming variable costs, not hoping for busier nights.
Break-even revenue = Fixed costs ÷ Contribution margin %
Covers per day = (Break-even revenue ÷ Avg check) ÷ 30
Practical tips for beating break-even
Recalculate quarterly: rent escalations and wage increases move the target silently. Attack variable costs first: each point of food or labor cost you cut lowers break-even by more than a point of fixed-cost savings, because it compounds across every sale. And sanity-check the result against physical capacity: if break-even demands 400 covers a day from an 80-seat room, no amount of hustle fixes the model: the concept, pricing, or cost structure has to change.
Frequently asked questions
What is break-even for a restaurant?
The break-even point is the sales level where total revenue exactly covers total costs: every dollar above it is profit, every dollar below is a loss. It's expressed as monthly revenue, or more usefully, as covers per day. Knowing the number turns 'we need a busy weekend' into a concrete daily target.
What counts as fixed vs variable costs?
Fixed costs don't change with sales: rent, insurance, base salaries, loan payments, licenses. Variable costs move with every cover: food, hourly labor, packaging, credit card fees. Some costs are semi-variable, utilities rise with volume but never hit zero, so put them in whichever bucket matches their behavior most closely.
What is a good contribution margin for a restaurant?
Contribution margin, the share of each sales dollar left after variable costs, typically runs 30–40% for full-service restaurants and 40–55% for quick service. A higher contribution margin means you break even at lower sales, which is why controlling food and hourly labor costs matters more than trimming fixed costs.
How many covers per day does a restaurant need?
It varies enormously: a small café might break even at 80 covers a day while a large full-service restaurant needs 300+. The calculator above gives your number from your costs and average check. Compare it against your seats × turns: if break-even needs more covers than your dining room can physically serve, the model needs reworking.