Labor planning

Labor Productivity and Staffing Capacity Calculator

Calculate loaded labor cost, labor percentage, sales and orders per labor hour, affordable hours, required sales, and modeled order capacity across prep, service, and cleanup.

Use real paid hours and a documented payroll burden. This planning tool does not determine legal staffing, wage, break, overtime, or classification requirements.

Sales, demand, and labor target

Plan name

Forecast sales

Forecast orders

Public service hours

Target labor cost (%)

Payroll burden (%)

Target orders per labor hour

Paid labor by phase

Include every paid phase, even when a team member works in more than one phase.

Phase 1

Phase or role group

People

Paid hours each

Average hourly wage

Labor hours

Direct wages

$128.00

Loaded cost

$143.36

Phase 2

Phase or role group

People

Paid hours each

Average hourly wage

Labor hours

Direct wages

$432.00

Loaded cost

$483.84

Phase 3

Phase or role group

People

Paid hours each

Average hourly wage

Labor hours

Direct wages

$64.00

Loaded cost

$71.68

Labor result

Loaded labor

$698.88

Labor percentage

23.3%

Below modeled labor budget

$141.12

7.3 additional hours within budget

Total labor hours36

Sales per labor hour$83.33

Orders per labor hour6.7

Modeled order capacity252

Capacity gap+12 orders

Sales needed at target$2,496.00

Interpret productivity carefully

Include owner labor when the owner is performing work that would otherwise need paid coverage.
Use loaded cost when comparing labor with sales, not only the hourly wage.
Separate prep, travel, service, and cleanup so the source of excess hours stays visible.
Do not remove required coverage, breaks, supervision, food safety, or safe closing work to meet a percentage.
Compare similar menus, service models, locations, and event types before treating a benchmark as a target.

Continue the workflow

Check the service bottleneck Build the staff schedule Download the printable labor plan Test full event profitability

Labor percentage alone does not prove the shift is staffed well

A low labor percentage can come from strong sales, missing paid time, understaffing, or an incomplete payroll burden. A high percentage can reflect weak sales, excess hours, training, a difficult event, or essential prep and cleanup. Review the percentage together with sales per labor hour, orders per labor hour, service quality, safety, wait time, overtime, and the work that was actually completed.