Restaurant Minimum Billable Rate
Hourly rate = (compensation + overhead + profit) / billable hours
Gather recipe sheets, supplier invoices and stock counts. Include ingredients, service labour, and facility overhead. The starting figures are examples. Replace them with your own records.
Formula and worked example
Hourly rate = (compensation + overhead + profit) / billable hours
| Input | Example |
|---|---|
| Annual owner compensation target | 50,000 |
| Annual fixed overhead | 30,000 |
| Annual profit target | 20,000 |
| Annual billable hours | 1,200 |
| Calculated result | 83.3333 per billable hour |
Choose reliable inputs
Track purchased quantities, usable yield, labour and waste before deciding on a selling price. For this restaurant calculation, use recipe sheets, supplier invoices and stock counts and a consistent definition of one cover.
- Ingredients: include the portion belonging to this cover or reporting period, and record where the value came from.
- Service labour: include the portion belonging to this cover or reporting period, and record where the value came from.
- Facility overhead: include the portion belonging to this cover or reporting period, and record where the value came from.
Use the same currency for every money input. Do not mix weekly costs with monthly revenue, or count the same expense in both an itemised cost and allocated overhead.
Should I use paid hours or billable hours?
Admin, travel, training, and unpaid gaps reduce billable hours. Dividing by all paid hours usually understates the necessary charge.
Compensation is a business planning input; this is not a payroll or tax calculation.
What if this input changes?
If annual owner compensation target rises by 10%, this example changes by 4.1667 per billable hour. This shows the effect of one change; it does not predict what will happen.
Open the calculator, save your baseline, then change the input supported by the least reliable estimate in your records. Compare both scenarios before committing to a price or capacity promise.