Restaurant P&L statement builder (India)
Build a complete monthly profit & loss statement for your restaurant. Enter revenue by channel (dine-in, delivery, catering, bar) and expenses across COGS, labour, occupancy, marketing, admin, depreciation and taxes. Gross profit, EBITDA, net profit, food cost %, labour cost % and prime cost ratio auto-calculate — with Indian industry benchmarks shown for each margin so you know immediately what 'good' looks like. Compare up to 3 months side-by-side. Print A4 landscape or export CSV for your accountant. Saves in browser. No signup.
Reading the margins
Gross profit is revenue minus COGS (food + beverage + packaging consumed). A healthy Indian restaurant runs 62–70% gross margin. Below 55% means either your food cost is too high, your pricing is too low, or there is significant wastage / pilferage in the kitchen. Above 72% is possible for high-margin bar formats. The tool flags gross margin in green if above 60%, yellow if above 50%, red below that.
EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) is the most useful operating health metric. A well-run Indian QSR or casual format should generate 18–25% EBITDA margin. Below 10% is a warning sign that occupancy or labour is absorbing too much revenue. EBITDA margin below 0% is a structural problem — usually rent-too-high, prime-cost-too-high, or revenue-too-low. Operationally you can improve EBITDA margin faster than net margin because depreciation and tax are less controllable month-to-month.
Net profit is what the owner takes home. After depreciation and tax, a healthy restaurant should net 10–18% in a good month. Note that depreciation is a non-cash expense — if you have a high depreciation charge from a heavy fit-out, your cash flow may look healthier than your net profit suggests. Conversely, a restaurant showing 20% EBITDA but only 3% net profit is likely carrying significant debt service (EMI) or a deferred tax liability.
The prime cost trap
Prime cost = COGS + labour. For Indian restaurants the sweet spot is below 65% of revenue. When prime cost creeps above 70%, the restaurant has almost no room to cover occupancy, marketing and admin — the owner is essentially running a 0% margin business that will absorb any unexpected expense. The most common culprit is not high food cost but high labour: overstaffing for the revenue level, keeping idle kitchen hands during slow periods, and not tracking covers-per-labour-hour.
Aggregator commission (Swiggy / Zomato) typically runs 18–30% of delivery revenue. At 25% commission on a menu priced for dine-in, your food cost + commission already exceeds 55–60% of that order — before labour or electricity. The fix is either a delivery-specific menu priced 10–15% higher or a cloud kitchen format designed around those economics from day one.
Where this fits
- Prime cost calculator — if you want to focus on just the COGS + labour ratio without building the full P&L, this is the single-number version
- Breakeven analysis calculator — once you know your fixed costs from this P&L, the breakeven tool tells you the cover count or revenue you need each day
- Food cost calculator — to audit the COGS line in this P&L, use the food cost % calculator with your actual stock consumption
- Labour cost calculator — to build the labour lines precisely, use the labour cost % calculator with your actual headcount and wages
- Cash variance calculator — the daily cash close that feeds into the monthly revenue line of this P&L
- P1 — Cash close pillar — every article on daily reporting, shift close, and financial visibility for restaurant operators