Restaurant break-even calculator

What sets a restaurant’s break-even point?

Fixed costs: everything you pay whether or not a guest walks in. Rent, salaries, the minimum on the electricity and gas bills, subscriptions and loan EMIs.

Average spend per cover: sales ÷ covers, across the whole day. A café at ₹180 a cover in the morning and ₹420 at night has neither number as its average; it has a blend of the two.

Gross margin: 100% minus your food cost %. A 30% food cost leaves 70%. Planning at 65% leaves room for wastage, staff meals and the bad night. If packing or card fees are a large share of sales, take them off the margin as well.

What does a worked example look like?

Rent ₹80,000, salaries ₹1,50,000, and ₹45,000 for electricity, gas and subscriptions: fixed costs of ₹2,75,000 a month. Average spend ₹450 a cover at a 65% gross margin: each cover leaves ₹292.50.

Break-even is ₹2,75,000 ÷ ₹292.50 = 940.2, so 941 covers a month, or 32 a day. In a 45-seat room that is less than one seating a day. Raise the rent from ₹80,000 to ₹2,00,000 and the same room needs 46 covers a day.

After break-even the sums turn round: from cover 942 onwards, each one adds ₹292.50 to profit. That is why the small moves matter: one more table turned, a little more on the average bill, a quiet Monday kept from losing money.

How do you use the number day to day?

Put the daily figure where the manager sees it and compare it with each night’s close, not with the month end. Checked nightly, it steers; checked monthly, it explains what already happened.

Work it out again whenever an input moves: a rent revision, a new hire, a menu reprice or a supplier rise.

CountStand’s Owner Cockpit can show each day’s net sales, covers, labour cost and food cost %: sales ÷ covers is your spend per cover, and 100% minus food cost is your gross margin.