Restaurant break-even,
in covers per day.

Divide monthly fixed costs by the contribution each cover makes. Contribution per cover is the average ticket minus the variable cost of serving it. The answer is the number of covers a month you need before the restaurant stops losing money; divide by 30 for a daily target.

Covers needed per month = monthly fixed costs (rent + wages + other fixed costs) ÷ contribution per cover (average ticket minus variable cost per cover), rounded up. The daily figure divides the monthly number by 30 and the weekly figure by 4.33, both rounded up.

Divide monthly fixed costs by your contribution margin ratio, which is 1 minus variable cost as a share of sales. With $25,000 of fixed costs and variable costs at 32% of sales, break-even revenue is $25,000 ÷ 0.68, about $36,765 a month.

Fixed costs stay the same whether you serve ten covers or two hundred: rent, salaried and rostered wages, insurance, software, loan repayments, licences. Variable costs rise with every cover: food, packaging, card fees and delivery commission. Wages are the grey area — the core rota is fixed, while extra shifts added for busy days behave like a variable cost.

Treat the rota you need to open the doors as fixed, because you pay it whether the room is full or empty. Only hours you add or cut in direct response to covers are variable. Most small restaurants are closer to fully fixed than they think, which is why break-even covers matter so much.

The calculator flags 60 covers a day or fewer as realistic, 60–120 as demanding and above 120 as stretched. These are the tool’s own bands, not an industry standard. What makes a number realistic is your seats and trading hours: 60 covers a day is under one turn for a 70-seat room, and more than two turns for a 25-seat café.

If contribution per cover (average ticket minus variable cost) is zero or negative, the calculator can’t compute a break-even and shows a dash. It means every cover loses money before rent is paid, so no volume of covers would break even — the price or the cost has to change first.

Monthly revenue at break-even is the covers needed per month multiplied by the average ticket — the total topline you need to hit before the restaurant starts contributing profit above its fixed and variable costs.

Delivery raises variable cost per order, because commission and packaging are added on top of food. Food at 30%, packaging at 5% and commission at 20% puts variable cost at 55%, which leaves 45 cents of each dollar to pay fixed costs instead of 70. A delivery-heavy kitchen needs far more orders to break even than its food cost alone suggests.

Include them if you want to know when the restaurant pays its way in cash. Interest and repayments are a fixed monthly outflow like rent. Leave out depreciation, which is an accounting entry rather than cash, unless you are working out break-even for a set of accounts.

It varies too much to give one number: it depends on how quickly covers build, how much was spent opening, and how long the lease rent-free period lasts. A more useful question is how many months of losses you can fund. Work out the monthly shortfall at your expected opening covers, multiply by the months you expect to take to reach break-even, and hold that much in reserve.

Usually raising the ticket, because every extra dollar on the ticket lands on every cover. On a restaurant with $25,000 of fixed costs, a $28 ticket and 32% variable cost, adding $2 to the ticket cuts break-even from 44 covers a day to 41, while taking $1,000 a month off rent only cuts it to 43.