To calculate labour cost per dish, time how long each stage of production takes (prep, cooking, plating), multiply those minutes by your fully loaded hourly labour rate, then divide by the number of portions produced. Add that figure to your food cost to get the true cost per plate — and compare it against the selling price to see whether the dish actually earns its place on your menu.
Most chefs know their food cost percentage to the decimal. Far fewer know what a dish costs in time. That's a problem, because a menu item with a beautiful 28% food cost can still lose money if it eats 40 minutes of skilled labour for every ten covers. Here's how to run the numbers properly.
Don't use the base hourly wage. Your true labour cost per hour includes everything you pay to have that person in the kitchen:
Example: A cook earning £14/hour might genuinely cost you £17–£18/hour once everything is loaded in. In the US, a $16/hour line cook often costs $19–$20 fully loaded.
For simplicity, many kitchens use a blended kitchen rate — total weekly labour cost divided by total hours worked. If your kitchen payroll (fully loaded) is £3,400 for 200 hours, your blended rate is £17/hour, or about £0.28 per minute.
Break the dish into its real production stages and time them honestly — not how long it should take, but how long it does take. Include:
Worked example — braised beef short rib:
| Task | Labour time | Portions | Minutes per portion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trim and sear beef | 25 min | 10 | 2.5 |
| Make braising liquid | 15 min | 10 | 1.5 |
| Reduce sauce, finish | 20 min | 10 | 2.0 |
| Plating at service | — | 1 | 3.0 |
| Total | | | 9.0 min |
At £0.28/minute, that's £2.52 of labour per plate.
Now combine the two:
If the dish sells for £22, your gross margin is £14.68 — a 33% combined cost. That's healthy.
But run the same math on a fiddly starter: £2.10 food cost, 14 minutes of labour (£3.92), selling at £9.50. Combined cost is £6.02 — 63% of the selling price before you've paid rent, utilities, or a single other overhead. That dish is quietly bleeding you.
Once you know the true cost, ask four questions:
1. What's the real contribution margin?
Selling price minus food cost minus labour cost. A £22 dish contributing £14.68 beats a £12 dish contributing £5, even if the cheaper one has a better food cost percentage. Percentages mislead; pounds pay rent.
2. Does it bottleneck the kitchen?
A dish that needs 6 minutes of plating during a Friday rush costs more than its timed minutes suggest — it slows every other plate behind it. Opportunity cost is real even if it doesn't show in the spreadsheet.
3. Can the labour be batched or moved?
Before cutting a dish, ask whether prep can shift to quieter hours, be partially pre-made, or be simplified. Cutting 3 minutes of labour at £0.28/min saves £0.84 per plate — across 80 covers a week, that's over £3,400 a year.
4. Does it earn its menu slot strategically?
Some labour-heavy dishes justify themselves as signature items that drive bookings. That's a legitimate choice — but make it knowingly, with the numbers in front of you, not by accident.
As a quick screen, many operators aim for combined food + labour cost per dish of 55–65% of the selling price (prime cost thinking applied at the plate level). Above that, the dish needs repricing, re-engineering, or removing. Below it, you've got a workhorse worth promoting.
You can do all of this with a stopwatch, a notebook, and a spreadsheet — and honestly, doing it manually the first time teaches you a lot about where your kitchen's hours actually go. The hard part is keeping it current: wages change, suppliers change prices, and a costing done eight months ago is fiction today.
If you'd rather not rebuild the spreadsheet every time something shifts, that's exactly the problem PrepSheet solves. Start with the free food cost calculator at getprepsheet.com/calculator to nail down your ingredient costs per dish, and if you want the full framework ready-made, the Excel costing templates in the shop at getprepsheet.com/shop give you a structured place to combine food cost, labour minutes, and portion math — so "is this dish worth keeping?" becomes a five-minute question instead of a gut feeling.