Prime cost

Rent, insurance, and utilities are mostly fixed — you can't renegotiate them mid-service. Prime cost is different: it's the part of the P&L you steer every day. Add cost of goods sold (everything that goes into a dish or a glass) to total labour (wages, payroll taxes, benefits), and you have the number that decides whether a busy month is actually profitable.

As a rule of thumb, full-service venues aim to hold prime cost near 55-65% of revenue; run much past that and little is left for fixed costs and profit. The two halves trade off, too: a low food cost won by cutting corners can quietly push labour up, so watching either alone misleads — prime cost forces you to see them together.

There is no single Methodus button that spits out prime cost, because labour lives in your scheduling and payroll. But the heavy half — accurate, up-to-date cost of goods — is exactly what recipe and food costing give you, and it's the half most venues get wrong first.