Written by The Pragmatic CFO. 15+ years running restaurant P&Ls.
Last updated July 30, 2026.
Sales per labor hour (SPLH) is total sales divided by total labor hours worked in the same period. A full service casual should be running $85 to $110 SPLH. QSR runs $75 to $95. It is a better management number than labor cost percentage because it isolates productivity from wage rate and sales mix.
The formula
SPLH = Net sales / Total labor hours (all positions)
Include every hour paid: hourly crew, salaried managers converted to a 45-hour week, prep, dish, host, everyone. Exclude nothing. If someone is on the clock, the hour counts.
Do it by day, by daypart, and by shift. Weekly averages hide the shifts where you are burning money.
Why labor cost percentage lies to you
Labor cost percentage is labor dollars divided by sales. It moves for three reasons: wage rates changed, hours changed, or sales changed. When your labor % goes from 27% to 30%, you cannot tell which one is the culprit without more work. When your labor % goes from 30% to 27%, you might feel great, but if it happened because you raised prices 5%, you actually got less productive at the same time.
Sales per labor hour separates the physics from the pricing. If SPLH is flat and labor % dropped, you took price. If SPLH is up and labor % dropped, you actually got more efficient. Two very different diagnoses.
For the labor cost percentage view (still useful, just not sufficient), see our piece on what percentage labor cost should be.
Benchmark table by concept
| Concept | Weak SPLH | Healthy SPLH | Best-in-class |
|---|---|---|---|
| QSR (limited menu) | < $65 | $75 to $95 | > $110 |
| Fast casual | < $75 | $90 to $115 | > $130 |
| Full service casual | < $70 | $85 to $110 | > $125 |
| Fine dining | < $95 | $110 to $150 | > $175 |
| Bar / lounge | < $110 | $140 to $180 | > $220 |
| Coffee shop | < $60 | $70 to $90 | > $105 |
These are blended figures across front and back of house. If you are running the BOH separately, expect kitchen SPLH to be 40 to 60% higher than the blended number and FOH to be 20 to 35% lower.
Reading SPLH by daypart, not by week
A weekly SPLH of $92 might hide a Sunday brunch clocking $135 and a Tuesday lunch clocking $54. The Sunday shift is subsidizing the Tuesday shift, which means Tuesday’s labor build is wrong, not that your restaurant is fine.
Set SPLH targets by daypart. Print a daily report that shows target SPLH, actual SPLH, and variance by shift. Managers who see a $22 SPLH miss on their Tuesday lunch will cut a prep hour or send a host home. Managers who only see the weekly number will not.
Pair this with a daily financial dashboard and the discipline sticks.
How to build the number from a Toast or Square export
- Pull labor hours by day from your scheduling or POS report. Include salaried managers at 45 hours per week per person.
- Pull net sales by day from your POS. Net sales, not gross. Comps and discounts should be out already.
- Divide sales by hours for each day. That is your daily SPLH.
- Sort the last 8 weeks of daily SPLH by day of week. Pick the 25th percentile of each day as your minimum acceptable. Any shift below that is a coaching conversation.
- Aim for a 7 to 12% improvement over 6 months. That is realistic without cutting service. Aggressive is 15%+ and requires menu or scheduling redesign.
The trap of overshooting SPLH
Above a certain threshold, higher SPLH means understaffing. You are trading guest experience for a short-term number and it shows up later in lower repeat visit rates. Signals you are overshooting: check average declining while SPLH climbing (guests are ordering less because service is slow), online rating dropping 0.2 stars over a quarter, back of house callouts increasing.
The rule: SPLH above best-in-class for your concept is not a trophy. It is a warning. Look at complaints and repeat guests before you celebrate.
SPLH by position
Total SPLH is the headline. Position-level SPLH is where the actual scheduling decisions live.
| Position | What to divide by | Full service target |
|---|---|---|
| Server | Server hours | $180 to $260 sales per server hour |
| Line cook | Line cook hours | $220 to $320 sales per line hour |
| Prep | Prep hours | $400 to $600 sales per prep hour |
| Dish | Dish hours | $450 to $650 sales per dish hour |
| Host | Host hours | $300 to $450 sales per host hour |
When one position is way off, that is where to look first. Dish under $300 usually means you are staffing a full shift where a half shift would work. Prep over $650 usually means kitchen staff is doing prep in service hours, which is expensive labor doing cheap labor’s job.
The relationship between SPLH and prime cost
Every $10 improvement in SPLH at $2M in annual sales removes roughly 100 to 130 labor hours per week. At a $17 blended wage plus 15% burden, that is about $2,000 to $2,600 in weekly labor savings, or $105K to $135K annually. That single lever moves your prime cost by 4.5 to 6 points.
Prime cost is the compound metric. SPLH is the operational lever inside it. See prime cost, the one number that predicts profitability for the wider view.
FAQ
Should I include tips in the sales number for SPLH?
Use net sales excluding tips. Tips distort the ratio. If you want a separate view, calculate sales per tipped labor hour on the FOH side, but keep the main SPLH tip-free.
What about salaried managers?
Convert them at 45 hours per week per manager. This keeps you honest about the full labor load and stops SPLH from looking artificially strong just because you pushed hourly conversions into salary.
How does SPLH change with delivery orders?
Third-party delivery revenue inflates SPLH artificially because the labor to fulfill those orders is often less than an equivalent dine-in check. Track dine-in SPLH separately and reserve the blended number for the total P&L view.
What is the fastest way to move SPLH?
Shift schedule design. Kill the third BOH person on your slowest lunch. Move your host to a 3.5-hour split shift instead of a 5-hour block. These two changes alone typically move SPLH by 7 to 10%.
Does menu simplification move SPLH?
Yes. Cutting 20% of SKUs typically improves BOH SPLH by 6 to 12% because prep, cross-training, and station design get faster. It usually improves FOH SPLH by 3 to 5% because ticket times drop and turn rates rise.
For the full 2026 benchmarks, see our State of Restaurant Finance report.