What Is a Good Food Cost Percentage? (By Restaurant Type)
You heard a number somewhere — 30%, probably — and now you’re staring at your own P&L running 34% and wondering if that four-point gap means you’re bad at this. Maybe a supplier rep said it. Maybe a Facebook group. Either way, it’s lodged in your head as the line between a healthy kitchen and a leaky one.
Here’s the straight answer, up front: a good food cost percentage for most restaurants runs 28–35% of the menu price, and about 30% is the number most full-service owners aim for. But “good” is not one number — it depends on what you sell. A pizzeria and a steakhouse have no business chasing the same target. So before you reprice a thing, find your format below.
The short answer, by restaurant type
The industry-wide average lands in that 28–35% band. From there it flexes by format — here’s roughly where each one tends to sit:
| Restaurant type | Typical food cost | Why it lands there |
|---|---|---|
| Pizzeria | 20–30% | Dough, sauce, and cheese are cheap; the margin is in the crust |
| Bar / pub (food) | 25–35% | Food runs near cost to keep people drinking — beverage carries the margin |
| Cafe / coffee shop | 25–35% | Coffee itself costs pennies; pastries and sandwiches set the food number |
| Fast casual / QSR | 25–32% | Simple menus, tight specs, and volume hold it down |
| Casual full-service | 28–35% | The middle of the road — the range most owners quote |
| Fine dining | 30–40% | Premium ingredients, paid back by a high check average |
| Steakhouse / seafood | 35–45% | Market-price protein dominates the plate |
Treat these as typical operating ranges, not a grade you pass or fail. They’re where each format tends to land — not a number every restaurant of that type must hit.
Why the ranges are so different
The percentage on its own tells you almost nothing until you know what’s carrying it. A steakhouse can run 40% food cost and still be one of the most profitable rooms in town, because the protein is the whole draw and the check average is built to absorb it. A pizzeria running 22% isn’t automatically healthier — dough and cheese are just cheap, so a low number is the floor, not an achievement.
That’s the thing the benchmark hides: food cost percentage is only “good” relative to what your format and your check average can carry. Chasing someone else’s number — a fine-dining owner trying to hit a pizzeria’s 25% — usually means gutting the exact thing customers are paying for.
”Is 20% good? Is 35% too high?” — the questions people actually ask
- Is 20% good? For a pizzeria or a bar, 20% is normal and healthy — the inputs are cheap. For a full-service kitchen, a 20% food cost usually means either an unusually high check average or a portion that’s too small to keep people coming back. Low isn’t automatically better.
- Is 30% typical? Yes. Thirty percent is the round number most full-service operators anchor to, and 28–32% is the comfortable band around it.
- Is 35% too high? Not necessarily. For casual full-service it’s the top of the range and worth a look; for a steakhouse or a raw bar it’s just a Tuesday. Judge it against your format and your margin, not against a number you heard once.
”Below average” doesn’t mean you’re safe
Here’s where owners relax too early. Your blended food cost can read a comfortable 29% while one or two dishes on the menu are quietly bleeding — the average just hides them behind everything that’s tight. A single number for the whole menu is a blur; the leak lives at the dish level.
And there’s a second trap: the percentage you think you’re running (what the recipes say) is almost never the percentage you’re actually running (what the P&L says). The gap between them is the portion that drifted, the supplier who nudged a price, the trim in the bin. If your number crept up and you can’t say why, that’s its own problem — we pulled that apart here — and the percentage itself will never tell you which dish moved.
The number that actually matters more
If you only track one figure, don’t make it food cost — make it prime cost: food plus labor, together. Food cost alone can look fine while labor quietly eats the difference, which is exactly how a busy restaurant still isn’t making money at the end of the month.
The rule of thumb most operators live by: keep prime cost at or under 60% of sales. It’s the number you can actually move week to week — portions, schedules, suppliers, waste — where rent and insurance are mostly locked in. We stacked food and labor into that 60% in the 30/30/30 rule. A “good” 30% food cost sitting next to a bloated labor line is not a good week.
How to move toward your target
Say you’re genuinely over the range for your format. The order to reach for fixes is always the same — and repricing is last, not first:
- Fix the portion. The most common leak, and it’s free. The protein you eyeball drifts heavier over a busy stretch and drags the whole number up with it.
- Work the supplier. A price crept up on an invoice you approved in four seconds. Verify it, push back, or price-check one alternative before you accept it.
- Reformulate gently, where a dish can carry a small change the customer won’t notice — a leaner cut, a cheaper side, a tighter spec.
- Reprice — last. Only when the first three can’t close the gap, and only on the specific dishes that need it. Not the whole menu because one number looked high.
Want to see where a single dish actually lands before you touch anything? Run it through the free food cost calculator — plate cost, food cost %, and margin in a few seconds.
The honest catch
Benchmarks are a fine gut-check and a terrible dashboard. Knowing your format “should” run 30% does nothing if you can’t see that you’re actually at 34% until the accountant tells you six weeks after the portion drifted. And the moment you hand-calculate your real number, it starts going stale — next week’s invoice prices have already moved, and the figure you sweated over is a snapshot of a day that’s gone.
That’s the whole reason Mise exists. You snap a photo of each supplier receipt as it comes in, and we keep the real cost of every dish current against the prices you’re actually paying — so “good” stops being a number you heard once and becomes the number you’re running today, dish by dish.
But you don’t need us to start. Find your format’s range above, pull your top five dishes, and cost them against this week’s invoices. If the blended number’s fine but one dish is heavy, you’ve learned more than any benchmark could tell you. And if you want that kept honest automatically — see what your menu actually costs →
Built by people who’ve worked the line, signed the leases, and stared at the books. We help independent restaurants know what every dish actually costs — and what to do about it.
