Home / Restaurant / Restaurant Break-Even Calculator
Know your nightly number. No signup. ·
Break-even is the sales level where the restaurant stops losing money: fixed costs (rent, insurance, salaried staff, loan payments) ÷ contribution margin from each sales dollar. With a 60% variable cost (food plus hourly labor), every dollar of sales leaves 40¢ to pay fixed costs.
Translating that into covers per day makes it real: it becomes a number you can compare against your Tuesday reality. If the required covers feel out of reach, the levers are — in order of speed — average ticket (sell more per check), variable costs (portion and waste), then fixed costs (the lease).
Keep going with these tools — they build on this calculation: Restaurant Profit Margin Calculator, Prime Cost Calculator, Labor Cost Calculator and Menu Pricing Calculator. When your prices look right, print the menu with the Menu Maker — free templates, PDF & PNG. Want us to set the whole system up for you? Ask about concierge setup.
Costs that do not move with sales volume: rent, insurance, loan payments, salaried admin staff, licenses. Hourly kitchen and serving wages move with volume, so they belong in the variable percentage.
After food (28–35%) and hourly labor (25–35%), a healthy restaurant keeps 30–45% of each sales dollar to cover fixed costs and profit. Below 40% contribution makes break-even very hard.
It depends on seats and turns — a 40-seat room turning twice at dinner is roughly 80 covers on a strong night. Compare your break-even covers against your slowest weekday, not your best Saturday.