Hey all,
Wondering what the average percentage of revenue people pay in labor in a brick and mortar juice bar? Or benchmarks you set for your business?
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From what I see working for us and in speaking with other friends in the restaurant biz, payroll target is 25% of sales. I include payroll and benefits in that number. Obviously when you first start that number will be MUCH higher (for the first few months, payroll was more than revenue). We are in our 15th month and we are just around the 25% target now.
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thanks for this. Agree.
Hi guys,
I’m struggling with labor cost at our single location cafe so hoping to get more information. We are at an average of 37% for the year, including labor cost and payroll taxes. Are you including payroll taxes in your numbers?
We are a full service cafe with a full made to order food menu, coffee, smoothies, coldpressed juice pressed in house, almond milks made in house and a retail store). We are open 7am-6pm daily.
We’ve really worked on tightening up labor and efficiencies over the 7 years we’ve been open and I know this margin is still out of line for our business model. We are also in a very seasonal area so the only months we see super high volume is June - August. We have a minimum of labor required to keep our space open i.e. one retail/barista person, one line cook, a dishwasher/smoothie person and this does not include production days. We alternate juice/milk production…juice is pressed sun/tues/thur and milk mon/wed/fri.
Any thoughts anyone has are greatly appreciated.
Let me start with saying Congrats on being in business 7 years. I am only approaching 2, so my advice may be outdated or of no use.
Labor, all in (pay, taxes, healthcare) is typically a goal of no more than 27%, target at 25% or below from what I have discerned.
Based on what info you volunteered in your post, there may be a chance your overall menu is too large and is driving up payroll to make everything.
I have discovered what food (not juice or mylks) I can prep in advance and then deep freeze cuts labor down alot. I invested in a walk-in sub-zero freezer and super quick oven. I can prepare hot food (like our vegan chili) in a very large batch, portion it out, deep freeze it, and cook it within 6 minutes.
The smaller the menu means lower labor and lower food costs typically. I hope that helps.
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Thanks for the quick response! We live in a very small and seasonal community so we’ve had to diversify to become a profitable business, expanding our food menu has been one of the best things we’ve done to make that a reality. Our food sales are increasing rapidly every year since we expanded. I know we’re not perfect yet though and can certainly learn from others in this community no matter how long you’ve been in business. What kind of super quick oven do you have? Does it require a hood and fire suppression system?
We converted a retail space into restaurant, so we didnt install a hood due to cost. All heating equipment we use is self contained, so it is safe anywhere, hood or not.
We use the MerryChef Eikon e4. It’s great, but alittle small. There are larger versions and often great deals on previously owned. I highly recommend the line.
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This is great! Thank you! We are in the same boat with our space so need a self contained unit. I will look into that line. Thanks for the communication. If anything else comes to mind let me know!
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Hi there Juice Box! How are you reheating frozen chilli in your Merrychef? We use the same one but haven’t used it for something like that. When you say small menu how many items do you think is small?
We were reheating for about 6 minutes from a frozen 16oz “puck” in a small cake pan. Pause at 3 mins to stir, then resume for another 3. At the halfway point we’d also add the frozen cornbread puck on the side, so both came out at the same time.
Since it is the only heat source if we had too many hot food items it would become an operational bottleneck if you get several orders of different hot items at the same time.
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