Customer Acquisition Cost Calculator

CAC, or customer acquisition cost, is what you spend in marketing to win one new customer. It is marketing spend divided by the number of new customers it produced. It matters because every euro of ads and promotion only pays off if the customer comes back enough times to earn back the cost. A restaurant that knows its CAC can decide confidently how much to spend on acquisition instead of guessing.

CAC = total marketing spend / number of new customers acquired in the same period. If you spend €2,000 and gain 80 new customers, your CAC is €25. Be sure to count only genuinely new customers and to include all acquisition spend (ads, promo costs, agency fees) for an honest figure.

Payback is how long it takes a new customer to repay their acquisition cost in margin. Margin per visit = average check x margin %. Payback in visits = CAC / margin per visit, and payback in months = payback visits / visits per month. A short payback (one or two visits) means acquisition is healthy; a long payback means you are paying more to win customers than they quickly return.

There is no universal number, but a useful rule of thumb is that a customer should repay their CAC within their first one to three visits. If margin per visit is €21 and CAC is €25, payback is about 1.2 visits, which is excellent. When payback stretches to many visits or many months, the channel or offer needs rethinking.

CAC only tells half the story; lifetime value (CLV) tells the other. A higher CAC is fine if customers stay loyal and spend over years. The CLV/CAC ratio is the real test of whether acquisition is profitable, so pair this calculator with the customer lifetime value calculator to see the full picture.