Free restaurant break-even calculator (covers per day)

Short answer: your break-even is fixed costs divided by contribution margin, and it only becomes useful once it is expressed as covers per day. The calculator below takes four inputs (monthly fixed costs, variable cost percentage, average spend, trading days) and returns break-even revenue, the daily figure, covers per day, and, if you add your forecast, the margin of safety that should gate any lease or loan. The full method, worked example and daypart version live in the break-even guide; this page is the tool plus the honesty rules that keep its answer true.

The calculator

Honest inputs, honest answer

• Fixed costs: rent and outgoings, insurance, subscriptions, loan repayments, your own minimum wage, and the BASE ROSTER, if the quiet shift gets paid anyway, it is fixed.
• Variable %: food and beverage cost (28–35% for most venues) plus card fees and packaging (2–4%). Casual flex labour may join it; wishful thinking may not.
• Average spend: your POS’s actual number, not the number you would like. New venue? Use nearby comparables and round down.
• Trading days: real ones. A seven-day dream roster you will not actually run inflates nothing but confidence.

Reading the answer

Three readings. GATE: committing to a lease or loan below a 15–25% margin of safety is gambling with normal variance, this is the same stress test a lender runs on your business plan. STEER: covers per day turns every quiet service into a priced gap and every proposed cost into covers (that $2,000 rent increase = +8 covers a day, forever, ask the 8% occupancy test whether the site earns them). DIAGNOSE: if break-even keeps rising while prices do not, the drift has a name, find the line (food, labour, subscriptions) that moved and have the conversation while it is small.

Beyond the whole-venue number

Whole-venue break-even gates big commitments; daily decisions run on INCREMENTAL maths. Opening Tuesday lunch costs only the extra labour, energy and prep (rent is sunk), so the session justifies itself by clearing its own increment, not the venue’s average, the full daypart method, including what to do with near-misses, is in the slow-season playbook and the break-even guide. And recalculate quarterly: rent reviews, supplier creep and one extra shift can add ten covers a day to the target inside a quarter, and the venues that re-run the number catch it while it is still one conversation.

Mistakes that make the number lie

• Calling the base roster “variable” to flatter the result.
• Aspirational average spend instead of the POS’s actual number.
• Signing commitments at 102% of break-even and calling it a plan.
• Computing it once at opening and steering by a two-year-old floor.
• Using whole-venue maths for daypart decisions instead of incremental costs.

Frequently asked questions

How do I calculate my restaurant’s break-even point?
Break-even revenue = fixed costs ÷ contribution margin ratio. Add up everything you pay regardless of sales (rent, base roster, insurance, subscriptions, loan payments), work out what share of each sales dollar survives variable costs (1 minus your food-cost-plus-fees percentage), and divide. The calculator on this page does it and converts the answer into covers per day, the version you can actually manage with.

What counts as a fixed cost?
Anything that does not move when a customer walks in: rent and outgoings, insurance, software subscriptions, loan repayments, your own minimum wage, and, honestly, the base roster you would run on a dead Tuesday. The classic self-deception is calling rostered labour “variable”: if the quiet shift still gets paid, it is fixed, and pretending otherwise flatters the number while the bank account tells the truth.

What contribution margin should a restaurant use?
One minus your genuinely variable costs. For most venues that is food and beverage cost (28–35%) plus card fees and packaging (2–4%), landing contribution at 0.61–0.70. Casual labour that flexes with bookings can be treated as variable; the base roster cannot. When unsure, run the calculator twice (optimistic and honest) and respect the gap between the answers.

What margin of safety should I have over break-even?
Forecast at least 15–25% above break-even before signing a lease or loan. At 5% over, one wet month flips you negative; at 20%+ you can absorb a slow ramp, a supplier spike or a roadworks season. Lenders run exactly this stress test on your numbers, so running it first is both protection and credibility (it belongs in the business plan).

How do I use break-even for daily decisions?
Convert it to covers (or orders) per day and pin it where you plan: 79 covers means Tuesday’s 45 is a 34-cover gap with a dollar value, an extra opening hour must clear its own incremental labour, and a $6 special contributing $3.90 needs a known volume to be worth the prep. Whole-venue break-even gates big commitments; incremental per-session maths runs the daily calls.

How often should I recalculate?
Quarterly, and after any material change: rent review, menu re-price, wage movement, new hire, new loan. Break-even drifts upward silently, a few supplier increases plus one extra shift can add ten covers a day to the target within a quarter. Venues that re-run the number each quarter catch the drift while it is one conversation instead of a crisis.