All-You-Can-Eat Sushi Price Calculator

Price on food cost per cover, not per piece. Food cost per cover = average pieces eaten × cost per piece × (1 + waste %). Divide that by your target food cost to get the sustainable price. Example: 24 pieces at €0.60 with 12% waste is ~€16.10 of food per guest; at a 35% target food cost the sustainable price is about €46 per person. If your market price is lower, you must cut average consumption, waste or piece cost — or make the margin on drinks.

All-you-can-eat formats run a higher food cost than à la carte — typically 33–40% on food — because guests self-select the most expensive items and consumption varies. The lever is total cost per cover: portion size, the share of premium fish (salmon/tuna vs cheaper options), leftover penalties, and a realistic estimate of how many pieces an average table actually eats across the service.

In AYCE, food left on the plate is pure loss: you paid for it and it generates no extra revenue. Many venues add a leftover penalty per gram to align incentives. Even 10–15% waste on a €16 food cost per cover is €1.60–2.40 lost per guest — on hundreds of covers a day, that is the difference between profit and loss.

Divide monthly fixed costs by the total margin per cover (price − food cost − variable cost + drinks margin). With €14,000/month fixed costs and a €9 margin per cover, break-even is about 1,556 covers/month, or 60/day over 26 days. AYCE works on volume and table turns, so capacity and footfall must comfortably exceed the break-even covers.

Most profitable AYCE formats keep soft drinks, beer, sake and wine outside the fixed price. Beverages carry a much lower cost ratio (20–30%) than the food, so they are where the real margin is made. Including unlimited drinks in the price dramatically raises the break-even — model drinks revenue per cover separately, as this calculator does.