Restaurant KPIs: what to track and how to calculate them

Restaurant KPIs are the handful of numbers you check every week to see whether the business is making money, using its staff and seats well, and keeping guests coming back. A KPI (key performance indicator) is just a measure with a target and an owner. If nobody looks at it and nothing changes when it moves, it's a report.

This page is the map. It defines the KPIs most UK restaurants use, gives each one a formula, shows a full week worked through on one sheet, and points to the detailed pages where a KPI needs more than a paragraph.

Restaurant KPIs at a glance

• Track a small set weekly: net sales, covers, spend per head, gross profit, labour cost, prime cost and one guest measure.
• Measure money KPIs on net sales, which means sales excluding VAT and excluding tips and service charge.
• Labour cost means the full cost of employing people, including employer National Insurance, pension and holiday pay.
• Use UK figures for comparison. Many online targets are American, and US sales figures don't have 20% VAT inside them.
• Every KPI needs an owner, a target and a day of the week when someone looks at it.

What makes a good KPI

A useful restaurant KPI has four things:

1. A fixed formula. Write it down. "Labour %" means nothing until you've decided whether it includes employer NI, agency staff and the general manager.
2. A source. The till, the payroll, the stock count or the booking system. If the number has to be estimated, it will be estimated generously.
3. An owner. One person who explains the number when it moves. Usually the head chef, who leads the kitchen team, for food cost, and the general manager for labour. Spend per head often sits with whoever runs the front of house team.
4. A rhythm. Daily, weekly or monthly, and always on the same day.

Five numbers that get discussed every Monday beat thirty in a dashboard nobody opens.

Getting the sales figure right

Most money KPIs divide something by sales, so the sales figure has to be right first.

Take VAT out

Food and drink eaten on your premises is standard-rated for VAT, as VAT Notice 709/1 explains, and the standard rate is 20% (GOV.UK VAT rates). Menu prices include VAT, so a till total of £28,800 is £24,000 of sales and £4,800 owed to HMRC. Divide standard-rated takings by 1.20.

If you sell cold takeaway food, some of it may be zero-rated, so your till needs to split sales by VAT rate. The food cost percentage page covers mixed eat-in and takeaway sales in detail.

Take tips and service charge out

The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Act 2023 has applied in England, Wales and Scotland since 1 October 2024. The statutory code of practice tells employers to "Pass on all tips and service charges to workers without deductions". So a service charge belongs to your staff. Keep it out of net sales and out of spend per head, or a busy weekend will flatter both.

VAT Notice 709/1 also says that "If you make a service charge, it's standard-rated" (section 2.3). Your accountant will handle the VAT, but your KPIs should still leave the charge out of sales.

Take discounts and comps out

Net sales should be what guests paid for food and drink, after discounts and refunds. Record comps and staff meals separately. If they go through the till at full price and are then voided, check the void report so they don't inflate sales.

Sales and guest KPIs

Net sales

Formula: takings excluding VAT, tips, service charge and refunds.

Look at it by day and by session (lunch and dinner) as well as the weekly total. Compare it with the same week last year where you can, because restaurant sales follow the calendar: school holidays, bank holidays, paydays.

Covers

Formula: the number of guests served.

Covers tell you about demand. If your sales fall but covers hold, people are spending less. If covers fall, fewer people are coming through your door. Those need different fixes.

Spend per head

Formula: net sales ÷ covers.

Also called average spend or, in US guides, "average check". It moves with prices, menu mix and how well the team sells starters, sides, desserts and drinks. Split it into food and drink if your till allows.

Table turns

Formula: number of parties seated ÷ number of tables, per service.

Table turns show how often each table is used. They matter most when you're full and turning people away. On a quiet night, a low turn rate isn't a problem.

RevPASH (revenue per available seat hour)

Formula: net sales for a period ÷ (number of seats × hours open in that period).

Sheryl Kimes set out this measure in Cornell's Restaurant Revenue Management report (CHR Reports, Vol. 4, No. 2, February 2004). Her example is a 100-seat restaurant that makes $3,000 between 6pm and 8pm on Fridays. Its RevPASH for those hours is "$15 ($3,000/100 seats/2 hours)".

The report argues that RevPASH "is a much better indicator of the revenue-generating performance of a restaurant" than check average or seat occupancy on their own, because it combines both. Its sample table shows four restaurants with occupancy from 40% to 90% and average checks from $18.00 to $8.00. All four have the same RevPASH of $7.20.

RevPASH is most useful hour by hour. A low figure at 6pm and a high one at 8pm tells you where an early-evening offer or shorter table times might help.

No-show rate

Formula: bookings that didn't arrive ÷ total bookings × 100.

If you take bookings, this shows how many seats you held for nobody. Track it by day. Patterns, such as large groups on Saturdays, are what you can act on, with deposits or reminder messages.

Guest satisfaction

Pick one measure and keep it. Options include:

• Review rating: your average score on the review sites your guests use, tracked monthly.
• Complaints: the number per 1,000 covers, from a customer complaint log.
• Net Promoter Score: Bain & Company, which created the measure, describes it as asking "How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?" on a zero-to-ten scale. The score is "the percentage of customers who are promoters (those who scored 9 or 10) minus the percentage who are detractors (those who scored 0 to 6)".

Whichever you choose, read the comments as well as the number. A score tells you something changed; the comments tell you what.

Delivery and online share, net of commission

Formulas: delivery share = delivery net sales ÷ total net sales × 100. Delivery share after commission = (delivery net sales − app commission) ÷ total net sales × 100.

Track both. If the first rises and the second doesn't, the extra orders are mostly paying the app. Use the commission on your app statements, not a rate from a website, because rates differ by contract. Packaging and the dish cost still come out after that, so look at delivery GP separately, the same way you split food and drink.

Guest return rate

Formula: guests from a period who came back within your chosen window ÷ all identified guests from that period × 100.

You can only count guests you can recognise, usually from bookings or a loyalty scheme, so walk-ins drop out. Pick a window and keep it. For example, take everyone who booked in March and count how many booked again within 90 days. The 90 days is our example, not a standard. A falling return rate often shows up before falling covers, because new guests can hide lost regulars for a while.

Cost and profit KPIs

Gross profit (GP) on food and drink

Formula: (net sales − cost of sales) ÷ net sales × 100.

Cost of sales is opening stock + purchases − closing stock, so you need a regular stock count. Check deliveries against invoices as they arrive, or short deliveries end up in your food cost. Work out GP separately for food and drink, because their margins are different and a change in the mix can move the total.

Food cost percentage

Formula: food cost of sales ÷ food net sales × 100.

This is GP from the other side: a 68% food GP is a 32% food cost. The food cost percentage page covers stock valuation, credit notes, waste and staff meals.

Food cost variance

Formula: actual food cost % − theoretical food cost %, in percentage points.

Theoretical food cost is what the food should have cost if every dish went out exactly to recipe: for each dish, number sold × recipe cost, added up, then divided by food net sales. Actual food cost comes from your stock count. The gap is waste, over-portioning, theft, wrong recipe costs and counting errors. The food cost percentage page covers the actual side in detail.

Here's a worked example with made-up numbers. Food net sales are £10,000, recipe costs say £2,900 (29%), and the stock count gives £3,150 (31.5%). Your variance is 2.5 points, or £250 that week. XenoSoft, a US software and consulting firm, suggests a target of "under 2 points" in its KPI dashboard article. That's one operator's opinion, not a standard, so set your own after a few weeks of data.

Stock days and inventory turnover

Formulas: inventory turnover = cost of sales ÷ average stock at cost. Stock days = average stock at cost ÷ (cost of sales ÷ days in the period). Average stock is (opening stock + closing stock) ÷ 2.

These follow the textbook definitions in OpenStax's Principles of Accounting, section 10.5, which says inventory turnover "is computed by dividing cost of goods sold by average inventory". Restaurants just run them weekly, because most food stock is perishable.

A worked example with made-up numbers: food cost of sales for the week is £4,200, opening stock £2,000, closing stock £1,600. Average stock is £1,800. Turnover is £4,200 ÷ £1,800 = 2.3 times in the week. Stock days are £1,800 ÷ (£4,200 ÷ 7) = 3 days. If stock days creep up, you're paying for food that sits on shelves, and stock rotation gets harder.

Labour cost percentage

Formula: total labour cost ÷ net sales × 100.

Total labour cost includes gross pay, employer National Insurance, employer pension contributions, holiday pay as it's earned and agency staff. For 2026 to 2027, HMRC's rates and thresholds for employers set the main employer NI rate at 15%. Leaving the on-costs out can make labour look several points lower than it is. The restaurant prime cost page shows how to build the full figure.

Sales per labour hour

Formula: net sales ÷ total hours worked.

Labour percentage tells you about cost. Sales per labour hour tells you about productivity, and it doesn't move when pay rates rise. Use both. The sales per labour hour page goes into rota planning with it.

Prime cost

Formula: (cost of sales + total labour cost) ÷ net sales × 100.

Food and labour pull against each other: buying in prepared food cuts prep hours and raises food cost. Prime cost puts them together so a saving on one line that's really a cost on the other shows up. Details are on the prime cost page.

Break-even sales

Formula: fixed costs ÷ (1 − variable cost %).

Break-even is the sales figure at which you cover all your costs and make no profit. For a weekly check, treat cost of sales as variable and everything else (labour, rent, energy, insurance) as fixed for the week. Labour isn't truly fixed, but in the short term you're paying most of the rota regardless of how busy you are.

Cash variance

Formula: cash counted − cash expected from the till, per day.

Small differences happen. A pattern, such as the same shift short most weeks, needs looking into. A daily cash count gives you the figure.

Net profit

Formula: net sales − all costs, before tax.

This usually comes monthly from your accountant or bookkeeping software. The weekly KPIs above are there so the monthly figure isn't a surprise.

People KPIs

Labour turnover

Formula: leavers in the period ÷ average number of staff × 100.

Every leaver costs you recruitment, training and slower shifts while the new person learns. The labour turnover page covers how to measure it and what drives it. Exit interviews tell you why people go.

Training and compliance

The share of staff who have completed required training, such as allergens and food hygiene, and the number of certificates due to expire in the next 30 days. A training sign-off record and compliance renewals tracking make this a count rather than a guess.

Staff feedback

A short regular question to staff, answered anonymously, gives early warning before turnover shows it. So do regular one-to-ones.

Food safety and operations KPIs

These don't appear on a profit and loss account. They protect your hygiene rating, your defence if something goes wrong, and the sales that depend on both.

• Food hygiene rating: your score under the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, published on the Food Standards Agency ratings site. The food hygiene ratings page covers how inspections work.
• Checks completed on time: the share of fridge temperatures, opening and closing checks and cleaning tasks done and recorded on time. A missed check is a gap in your due diligence.
• Food safety audit score: from a regular internal audit.
• Waste: recorded food waste by value, as a share of food purchases. The waste management page covers how to record it.
• Incidents: accidents and near misses per month. Read near-miss reports before judging the trend, because a rise can mean people are more willing to report.

Kitchen ticket time

Formula: time an order is marked ready − time it reached the kitchen, in minutes. Track the median, and the share of tickets over your target.

A kitchen display system records both times. On paper tickets, a stamp or a written time on each check works for a sample week. We found no official UK target, and a soup and a well-done steak shouldn't share one, so set targets by course. Read it next to covers per hour, because ticket times usually stretch when the pass is busiest.

Worked example: one week on one sheet

This is a worked example with made-up figures for a 60-seat restaurant with 20 tables, open for dinner five nights a week, 5 hours a night.

The labour line uses the same figures as the worked example on the prime cost page, where the NI and pension working is shown.

In this week, the business covered its costs with £3,174 to spare. Prime cost at 63.7% leaves 36.3% for overheads and profit. With £6,500 of overheads (27.1%), the week made about £2,222 before tax, 9.3% of net sales.

If you'd used the till total including VAT, spend per head would show £36.00 and RevPASH £19.20. Both would look about 20% better than they really are.

Your weekly KPI worksheet

Copy this into a spreadsheet, one column per week. Fill in the inputs from your till, payroll, stock count and booking system, and let the formulas do the rest.

Inputs

Outputs

Add a target column next to each output and a short "why" note for anything that misses it.

Benchmarks: UK figures and where online targets come from

Most KPI guides quote target ranges. Before you compare yourself with one, check where it comes from.

The UK survey figures

The UKHospitality and Christie & Co Benchmarking Report 2022 surveyed 54 companies with 4,791 managed licensed outlets, "based on results for the six months to December 2021". Its figures, all as a share of turnover unless stated:

• Payroll: 28.3%, defined as "gross payroll costs including staff wages, PAYE, NICs and manager's salary".
• Gross profit on food sales: 67% across the survey. On wet (drink) sales: 66%.
• Utility costs: 5.1%. Premises costs, which exclude rent: 5.4%. Other ongoing costs: 5.1%.
• Operating costs before rent: "55.2% of turnover", ranging "from lows of 47.6% for Wine Bars, to a high of 59.8% for Accommodation-Led outlets".

Use these with care. The sample was mostly pubs, bars and managed groups. The six months included the end of furlough and a temporary VAT cut on food. Energy costs, employer NI and the National Living Wage have all risen since. Use them to see the shape of a licensed business's costs, then set targets from your own figures.

Ranges from software and US sources

The rest of the top search results quote ranges without a UK survey behind them. Treat them as opinion.

• Tableview's KPI guide gives full-service prime cost of "60 to 65 percent" and food cost of "28 to 35 percent", and calls its benchmarks "starting points, not laws".
• XenoSoft's dashboard guide sets prime cost "at or below 60%" and cites US National Restaurant Association medians for 2024: food and drink costs of 32.0% and wages including benefits of 36.5% for full-service restaurants. Those are US figures, on sales with no VAT in them.
• NetSuite's UK article says accommodation and food service has "annual staff turnover of 52%; well above the UK average of 34%", without a linked source.

The safest target is your own: last year's figure for the same week, and the ceiling your overheads allow. The prime cost page shows how to work that out.

How often to check each KPI

Share the weekly numbers with the team. A pre-shift huddle is a good place to say what last week's spend per head was and what you'd like this week's to be.

Common mistakes

Measuring against the till total. Including VAT makes spend per head, RevPASH and every cost percentage look better than they are.

Counting service charge as sales. Under the Tips Act it belongs to staff in England, Wales and Scotland.

Labour as wages only. Leaving out NI, pension and holiday pay makes labour look several points cheaper.

Changing definitions. If labour includes agency staff one month and not the next, the trend is meaningless. Write the formulas down.

Comparing with US targets. Different taxes, different pay rules, different cost structures.

Too many KPIs. If you can't say who owns a number and what they'd do if it moved, drop it.

Looking only at averages. A good week can hide a terrible Tuesday. Split by day and by session.

For more on building routines around these numbers, see our restaurant management tips.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most important restaurant KPIs?

For most restaurants: net sales, covers, spend per head, food and drink gross profit, labour cost percentage and prime cost, checked weekly. Add one guest measure and one people measure, such as labour turnover.

Should restaurant KPIs include VAT?

No. Measure sales excluding VAT, because the VAT isn't yours. Divide standard-rated takings by 1.20.

What is RevPASH?

Revenue per available seat hour: net sales for a period divided by seats multiplied by hours open. It combines how full you are with how much each guest spends.

What is a good labour cost percentage for a UK restaurant?

We found no official target. The 2022 UKHospitality and Christie & Co survey found payroll at 28.3% of turnover across its sample for the second half of 2021. Your own figure depends on your format, prices and how much you cook from scratch.

How often should I review restaurant KPIs?

Sales and covers daily, cost KPIs weekly, and profit and people measures monthly. Pick a fixed day for the weekly review.

Do service charges count towards sales?

Not in your KPIs. In England, Wales and Scotland, the Tips Act requires service charges to be passed to workers, so they aren't your revenue.