# Kitchen Labor costs



## ChefDP (Dec 10, 2020)

Hi all! Ive been in the industry for about 10 years now. I have a few questions about labor costs. I know at the end of the day labor costs include foh boh and salaries etc. With covid-19 its been a different year for this industry. Whats the average percentage of labor for a kitchen? I have me and three other employees at the moment. Lately my labor costs are about 20% and foh is about 20%. With food costs included were about 60%. I run a sit down restaurant that serves american pub food, we have soups, apps, salads, burgers and flatbreads and entrees We do roughly 8,000-10,000 in sales in a 4 day week. Our hours of operation are Thursday 4-8 friday 4-8 and the weekends were open 11:30 to 9:00. I want to cut labor costs to be even lower. The foh wants mine to be lower than theirs, since we pay bartenders 10 and hour now and servers 6. The kitchen is small, with only two stations right now. We have to do most of our dishes, open and close, trash, cardboard, prep etc. We have the kitchen in our upper level and fridges and prep rooms in our lower level. The way we get sat from foh makes it extremely hard to stay on top of prep some days. Some days we will get sat close to 100 a covers once we open, with tickets flying at the same time since were also short staffed in the front. Ive never gotten a break down or budget for hours or percentages etc. Just get notifed when they think its to high. Ive asked to open more hours to make more money to also help with prep and lower labor costs. Not everyone in management is on board though. We use to operate the kitchen with 7 people so it's a battle trying to figure out, the right way, to do everything. Was curious for input, as we want to continue to succeed. Thanks!


----------



## Seoul Food (Sep 17, 2018)

I don't see how you can lower labor if you are just able to cover the business you do now. If you are doing more business you can justify more labor then but if you only operate for a limited number of days and hours I don't see that happening. Also it is easier to find odd shift coverage for FOH but good luck finding BOH people that want to be PT. Cut too many hours and you may find yourself without any staff.


----------



## ChefDP (Dec 10, 2020)

Seoul Food said:


> I don't see how you can lower labor if you are just able to cover the business you do now. If you are doing more business you can justify more labor then but if you only operate for a limited number of days and hours I don't see that happening. Also it is easier to find odd shift coverage for FOH but good luck finding BOH people that want to be PT. Cut too many hours and you may find yourself without any staff.


Yea that's what I have been saying. To get labor to where they want to, with what my salary is. I would only be able to schedule 16 other hours. Its been hard to find the people I have now, because I can only promise them about 20 hours, and the pays low. Tough battle.


----------



## L'uovo vulcanico (Nov 9, 2020)

When you say "they think its too high", are you talking about management / owners or FOH? Seriously, if you are running flat out balls to the wall with the staff you have, then you're goig to be hard pressed to cut your costs from 20 to 16. I would ask what their justification is that your costs are too high - I'm wondering if they're actually overpaying their bar help (since, like servers, their wage is dependent on tips) or their FoH pay is otherwsie out of whack...

One thing we used to do was have dishwashers do a lot of our prepwork - it's easy to train them to your standards, their pay is less than cook wage, and it also gives you an idea if they can handle a jump up the ladder. Give them an incentive (say 25¢ an hour) for their time prepping, and they might decide they have a future int he restaurant, and it's a lot cheaper than paying a cook or chef $10 for prep work. Not saying they can't - many's a night when I've worked line *and* prepped at the same time - but you can utilize people in ways you may not be considering. 

Depending how your shop is structured, you can actually have others (bussers, even FoH people) step up...


----------



## Mischief (Dec 13, 2018)

It's all about finding problems, however small they may be. Then, find a solution/improvement to make the problem a strength. With your small set up and only being open 27 hours a week, I'd suggest getting BOH help in Wednesday to prep for the whole weekend pars. Then it's just about execution during service. Maybe you can prep it all and keep your help for service. You should also work with FOH to stagger tickets and reservations to make everyone's lives easier and improve guest experience. I've found that paying one great guy is better than two average cooks/utility guys.


----------



## Chef Piya (Dec 13, 2020)

Hi post Master, 
I think your labor cost is 40% over all seems reasonable, for me the last thing I touch is to cut labor cost. I would rather look into selling price and food cost at the first. However the big impact of your cost are other expenses such as linen, staff's benefit meal, gas, operating equipment, chemical, electricity and others. those are small in term of percentage if you breakdown but to be honest those if manage well over all are very high in term of cost. Look into something guest/customer not much value and try to remove it if this not necessary. buying right container/tools are also saving you in long run. but if you cut into labor meant staffs, you are creating stress/pressure for they are important to your over all cost. I would suggest you to look at 100 - 200 list of items where high in value and high in QTY. from there you can see if you can remove or find substitute. eventually finding permanent solution. Best of luck. remember you are not developing business, you are developing people and people who developed producing business, cheers


----------

