The 30/30/30 Rule for Restaurants, Explained
The 30/30/30 rule for restaurants explained: ~30% food, 30% labor, 30% overhead, ~10% profit. What each bucket means, how to hit the targets, and the lever most owners miss.
If you've looked for a simple way to sanity-check whether your restaurant can actually make money, you've probably run into the 30/30/30 rule. It's a back-of-the-napkin framework for splitting your revenue into the three big cost buckets — and it's one of the fastest ways to see whether your numbers leave room for profit at all.
Aim for roughly 30% food/COGS, 30% labor, and 30% overhead — which leaves about 10% profit. It's a target, not a law, but it's a sharp lens for spotting where your money is going.
The three 30s, explained
- ~30% — Food & cost of goods (COGS). What you spend on ingredients and product. Full-service often targets the high 20s to low 30s; a bar skews lower, a steakhouse higher. Track it by category, not just as one lump.
- ~30% — Labor. Wages, salaries, payroll taxes and benefits — front and back of house. This is the bucket that quietly creeps. (More on hitting the target in labor cost percentage.)
- ~30% — Overhead. Everything else: rent/occupancy, utilities, insurance, marketing, software, and — the silent one — third-party delivery commissions, which can quietly push this bucket over 30%.
- ~10% — Profit. What's left. If the three 30s run over, this is what gets eaten first. (See typical ranges in average restaurant profit margin.)
How to actually hit the targets
The lever most owners miss: grow the top line
Cutting costs has a floor — you can only trim so far before quality slips. Growing revenue doesn't, and it quietly fixes the overhead bucket, because rent and software are fixed while sales aren't. That's the side INFI works on: a growth layer that runs on top of your existing POS, not a replacement. Commission-free direct online ordering keeps delivery fees out of your overhead 30, and self-ordering kiosks lift average order value 15–30% across our own merchants — raising the denominator so every one of the three 30s gets easier to hit.
Want to see where your three 30s actually land? Book a free INFI demo and we'll walk through the math on your numbers.
Hero photo by Pylyp Sukhenko on Unsplash.
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