Profit per cover estimator
The food cost calculator works one dish at a time. This one works at the level your P&L does. Put in your covers, your average spend and your current food gross profit, then model a shift in either and see what a year of it is worth.
A model of your assumptions, not a forecast
Profit per cover estimator
Where you are now
What you want to model
How that is arrived at
Read this as a model, not a promise
Every figure here is arithmetic on numbers you entered. It shows what a given shift would be worth if you achieved it. It is not a forecast, not a guarantee, and not a result claimed for any client. It is also gross profit, not net: what the menu costs in labour comes out of it before anything reaches the bottom line. Whether those shifts are available on your menu is exactly what an audit establishes.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is stored or transmitted.
Spend and margin are different problems.
Average spend per cover is a menu design problem. It moves when the dishes carrying your margin are where people actually look, when sections are short enough to decide from, when descriptions do some work, and when the pricing architecture gives people a reason to trade up rather than down. Covers do not change. The basket does.
Food gross profit is a control problem. It moves when plate costs are accurate, portions are specified rather than judged, yield is costed on usable weight, and supplier price rises get noticed in the month they happen rather than the year they happen.
Most sites have something available on both, which is why the estimator models them separately. For how to move spend, see how to increase average spend per cover. A point of GP and a few percent of spend rarely come from the same intervention, and knowing which one your site is losing decides where the work starts. The covers side of the same equation, and which lever suits an empty room against a full one, is in the guide to increasing restaurant sales.
Other tools
Food cost calculator
One dish at a time: food cost, GP, cash margin and where it plots on the menu engineering matrix.
Open calculatorRecipe costing calculator
Build a plate cost from the ingredients upwards, with batch yields and a wastage allowance.
Open calculatorGP calculator
Gross profit both ways, with VAT handled on the correct basis.
Open calculatorSpend per cover is lifted most by two parts of the menu: starter menu optimisation and dessert menu profitability.
Profit per cover FAQs
What is a cover, exactly?
One guest served, not one table and not one bill. A table of four is four covers. Counting bills instead of covers is a common reporting error and it inflates average spend per cover by whatever your average party size is, which makes a site look far healthier than it trades.
Is average spend per cover the same as average transaction value?
No, and the gap between them is your party size. Average transaction value is per bill. Spend per cover is per person. A pub at £60 a bill and £19 a cover is a different business from one at £60 a bill and £30 a cover, and only the per cover figure tells you whether individual guests are spending more.
Why model spend and margin separately?
Because they are solved differently and the same site rarely needs both equally. Spend per cover moves through menu structure, sequencing, attachment and pricing architecture. Gross profit moves through costing, specification and supply. A site at strong GP and weak spend has a selling problem; one at strong spend and weak GP has a costing problem. Treating them as one number hides which you have.
Are these figures a forecast of what my site will do?
No. This is arithmetic on assumptions you supply, shown so you can see the size of the prize before deciding whether it is worth chasing. It is not a prediction, and nothing here is a claim about results delivered by this practice. What it is useful for is sanity checking: if a point of GP is worth less than the cost of pursuing it, that tells you something before you start.
Should I chase spend per cover or more covers?
Spend per cover first, almost always. Extra covers need marketing spend, capacity, labour and often more space, and each one brings its own cost to serve. A pound added to spend per cover arrives on the same covers you already have, through the same kitchen and the same team, and most of it falls to the bottom line. That is the whole argument the rest of this site makes.
The estimator shows the prize. An audit tells you whether it is there.
Send your menu and last quarter's food GP, and I will tell you which of those two levers your site is actually losing on.