What a Restaurant Budget Template Should Cover
A solid restaurant budget template tracks every dollar in and every dollar out across four core buckets: revenue, cost of goods sold (COGS), labor, and overhead. Most operators also add a fifth row for net operating profit so they can see margin at a glance.
Here are the essential line items:
- Projected covers × average check → Gross Revenue
- Food COGS (target: 28–32% of food revenue)
- Beverage COGS (target: 18–24% of beverage revenue)
- Front-of-house labor (wages + tips reimbursed)
- Back-of-house labor (hourly + salaried)
- Fixed overhead (rent, insurance, utilities, POS fees)
- Variable overhead (credit card processing, linen, supplies)
- Net Operating Profit = Revenue − COGS − Labor − Overhead
A Worked Example
Suppose your dining room does $85,000/month in revenue: $68,000 food, $17,000 beverage.
| Line Item | Amount | % of Revenue | |---|---|---| | Food COGS | $20,400 | 30% | | Beverage COGS | $3,570 | 21% | | Labor (FOH + BOH) | $28,050 | 33% | | Overhead | $10,200 | 12% | | Net Profit | $22,780 | 26.8% |
If food COGS creeps to 34% — say, because of uninvoiced waste or a price spike from your produce vendor — you lose roughly $2,720/month before you even notice.
Why Spreadsheet Budgets Break Down
Static spreadsheets like Google Sheets are genuinely useful for a first-pass budget. The problem is keeping them current: invoice prices change weekly, scheduling overruns happen, and most owners simply don't have time to reconcile actuals against the plan every Monday.
How Hubstaurant Replaces the Spreadsheet
Hubstaurant reads your vendor invoices automatically, so ingredient prices update in real time — no manual line-item entry. Food-cost analytics compare your actual COGS to your budget target the moment an invoice lands. The scheduling engine builds staff rotas from availability, keeping your labor line honest before the week starts, not after. And because POS data flows directly into the system, your revenue actuals are always live.
You get the budget view you'd build in a spreadsheet, but with numbers that are actually accurate.
Start Running on Real Numbers
Ready to swap the template for a system that fills itself in? Start a free Hubstaurant trial and see your food cost, labor, and margin in one dashboard on day one.