Restaurant Labor Cost Calculator

Italian HoReCa benchmarks: labor cost should be 25–35% of revenue. Fast food / counter service: 22–28%. Trattoria / pizzeria: 28–35%. Fine dining ristorante: 32–40%. Catering / banqueting: 25–32%. If your labor cost exceeds 40%, profitability is severely compressed unless food and rent costs are unusually low.

The CCNL (Contratto Collettivo Nazionale di Lavoro) Pubblici Esercizi is the national collective labour agreement governing restaurants, bars, hotels and catering businesses in Italy. It sets minimum gross salaries by job level (livelli), working hours, overtime rules, holiday pay and TFR (severance). The agreement is renewed periodically between Confcommercio and CGIL/CISL/UIL unions.

Total labor cost = gross salary + INPS social contributions paid by the employer (approx. 28–32% of gross) + INAIL accident insurance + TFR (trattamento fine rapporto, ~8.3% of gross accrued) + any meal allowances or transport contributions. The real cost to a restaurant is typically 1.35–1.45× the employee's gross salary.

Fixed labor costs are the wages of permanent staff you pay regardless of revenue (chef, head waiter, manager). Variable labor costs are extra/seasonal staff, part-time workers and agency staff whose hours scale with covers. Variable staff costs are more controllable — track them as a % of each service's revenue.

Break-even staffing = the minimum number of staff hours needed to run a service at the minimum covers required to cover all costs. Formula: required covers × average service time per cover / average covers per server. Below this level, quality suffers; above it, labor cost % rises.

Prime cost = food cost % + labor cost %. Anything above 65% leaves little room for rent, utilities and profit. Italian restaurants in city centres (Milano, Roma, Firenze) with high rents need prime costs below 60% to be viable. Use this calculator alongside the food cost calculator to track both.