Prime cost: the number that warns you before the quarter does
Your food cost can stay perfectly flat while your margin slides. Prime cost is the number that notices.
Greek food service lost €123 million in turnover in the first half of 2026. In the second quarter alone, restaurants and cafés were down 2.5% on the year, while hotels and other accommodation grew 6.1%. More visitors in the country did not mean more money in the till. If your covers dipped this year, the number most owners check every Monday, food cost, probably told you everything was fine. That is exactly the problem.
Why food cost stays calm when it shouldn't
Food cost is a ratio of purchases to sales. When covers fall, you buy less, so the ratio barely moves. The kitchen orders fewer kilos of beef and fewer crates of tomatoes, and the percentage sits where it always sits. It looks like control. It is just arithmetic.
Labour does not behave like that. The Saturday shift needs the same chef, the same two cooks and the same floor team whether you serve 60 covers or 45. Labour is a fixed block of euros sitting on top of a shrinking sales line. And since 1 April 2026, with the minimum wage at €920 a month, that block got heavier.
A week in numbers
Say a normal week brings in €10,000. Food cost runs at 31%, which is €3,100. Labour is €2,900, or 29%. Add them together and your prime cost is 60%.
Now covers drop 15%. Sales fall to €8,500. Food cost follows sales down and stays at 31%. Labour stays at €2,900, which is now 34.1% of sales. Prime cost jumps to 65.1%.
Food cost did not move. Your margin lost five points. On €8,500 of weekly sales, those five points are about €430 a week, roughly €22,000 over a year, and none of it shows up in the number you were watching.
What prime cost actually is
Prime cost is cost of goods plus labour, as a percentage of sales. Labour here means the full cost: wages, employer contributions and the extra hours. Together these are the two largest costs in almost every food business, and the only two you can really steer week to week. Rent and utilities matter, but you negotiate them once a year. Prime cost you can move on a Tuesday.
What number should you aim for?
- The international reference: the range most often cited for full-service restaurants is roughly 55% to 65% of sales. Treat it as a reference point, not a target.
- Your concept decides: a café with a short menu and counter service has a different cost structure from a fine-dining room with a large brigade.
- The real comparison is against yourself: your budget, your target and your last eight weeks. A three-point jump in a fortnight tells you more than any industry average.
Food cost tells you how the kitchen buys. Prime cost tells you whether the business is still earning.
Making it a Monday habit
You need three numbers from last week: sales from the POS, cost of goods from purchases and stock movement, and labour from the rota or payroll, contributions included. That is a fifteen-minute calculation. If you already track the gap between theoretical and actual food cost, prime cost sits right next to it on the same sheet.
When prime cost rises and food cost doesn't, look at labour against covers first. Which shifts were staffed for a busier week than the one you got? Could two quiet weekday services share one closing team? Is the rota built on last year's covers or this year's? These are scheduling questions, not cost-cutting ones, and they are far easier to fix in October than in January.
The quarter will tell you what happened. The week tells you while you can still do something about it.
Sources: ELSTAT turnover data for accommodation and food service, Q2 and H1 2026, as reported by ot.gr (25 August 2026) and news247.gr (26 August 2026). Minimum wage of €920 from 1 April 2026: taxheaven.gr. The weekly example is illustrative.
Related service Cost Control Work with me on this →