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Hospitality benchmark check

Put in your turnover and your three big costs. See exactly where you sit against the ranges the ATO publishes for venues your size.

The ATO publishes cost benchmarks for restaurants and coffee shops built from actual tax returns, broken down by annual turnover. This tool compares your figures to the band for your venue type and size, and tells you the dollars between you and the edge of it. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.

Venue type

The ATO publishes separate benchmarks and separate turnover bands for each, so this changes both the ranges and the size brackets. Pubs, taverns and bars have their own ATO benchmarks, which are not covered here.

Annual turnover$750,000
Cost of sales a year$270,000

Use the same figures you report: cost of sales is your purchases of stock, labour is wages, super and on-costs you pay staff. An owner's own drawings are not a labour expense and including them will read as a high labour ratio.

Labour a year$240,000
Rent a year$75,000

ATO band: $500,001 to $2,000,000

Cost of sales36.0%
inside the band (32% to 38%)
Labour32.0%
inside the band (23% to 32%)
Rent10.0%
inside the band (8% to 12%)
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Ranges are the ATO's published small business benchmarks for restaurants and coffee shops, built from 2023-24 tax returns. General information, not tax or accounting advice for your venue. Nothing you type here is sent anywhere or stored.

Where these ranges come from

Every range here is quoted from the ATO's small business benchmarks for restaurants and for coffee shops, built from 2023-24 tax returns and last updated in March 2026. They are not our estimates and we have not adjusted them. Cost of sales to turnover is the ATO's own key benchmark for both industries, which is why it sits at the top of the results. Note that the turnover bands differ between restaurants and cafes, so the two industries cannot be read across as like for like.

What being outside the band actually means

It is not automatically a problem, and it is not automatically a red flag. The ATO's published instruction for a venue outside its key range is to check that all income has been reported and that trading stock used for private purposes has been accounted for. Beyond that, a genuine gap usually points at one of three things: portioning, waste, or supplier price creep that never made it onto the menu. A dated stocktake and a supplier price history explain almost all of it.

Why labour is the widest band

Labour has the widest published spread of the three in every band, and most of that spread is how many paid hours go to work that does not need a person during service. The Fair Work Commission's Annual Wage Review 2026 lifted award wages 4.75 per cent from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, so a roster that sat inside the band last year can drift out of it with no change in hours at all. Before spending on anything, compare rostered hours against your genuine quiet and busy periods. The benchmark tells you where you stand; the roster is where the movable money is.

Turn the number into real money.

Get started and we'll show you the same numbers with your actual venue data, and a path to start recovering them in the first week.

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