Your restaurant P&L statement (profit and loss) is the one report that tells you whether all the work is turning into money. Owners often glance at the last line and stop. The value is in the middle — the handful of ratios that show exactly where margin leaks.
The lines that matter
- Net sales: revenue after discounts and taxes collected on behalf of the government.
- Food & beverage cost (COGS): what the sold items cost you, ideally 28-35% of sales depending on format.
- Labour cost: salaries, wages and staff meals, commonly 20-30%.
- Occupancy: rent, electricity and utilities.
- Prime cost: food cost + labour — the number to watch weekly.
Why prime cost is the north star
Food and labour are the two big, controllable costs, and together they usually decide whether a restaurant makes money. Keep prime cost under roughly 60-65% of sales and there is room for rent, overheads and profit. Above that, no amount of top-line growth fixes the leak.
Turn the statement into action
A monthly P&L is a post-mortem; a weekly one is a steering wheel. Compare food cost to your recipe-based ideal and investigate the gap — that difference is waste, theft, over-portioning or mispriced items. Compare labour to sales by daypart and fix the shifts that are overstaffed for the covers they serve.
Where your POS helps
Most of these numbers should assemble themselves. When billing, recipe-level inventory and staff scheduling live in one system, your sales, theoretical food cost and labour flow into reports without a spreadsheet marathon — so you spend the time acting on the P&L, not building it. That single-platform reporting is a core reason owners move to Restro Sarthi.
