Restaurant OPEX is the recurring operating expenditure needed to keep the business running: staff, rent, utilities, purchases, software, maintenance, marketing and outside services.
OPEX, short for operating expenditure, groups together a restaurant's recurring operating costs. Unlike CAPEX, which refers to long-term investments such as a refurbishment, machinery or new equipment, OPEX covers the costs that come round month after month so the business can open, buy, produce, sell and serve guests. In hospitality it includes items such as food and drink costs, staff costs, rent, utilities, accountancy fees, insurance, delivery commissions, maintenance, laundry, cleaning, marketing, software licences, POS, booking tools and small consumables. It is an important metric because it connects directly with the restaurant's profit and loss account, cash flow and EBITDA.
A site can turn over well and have a good average spend, but if its OPEX grows unchecked, operating profit disappears. It is also worth analysing OPEX by nature: variable costs that rise with sales, such as raw materials or commissions, and fixed or semi-fixed costs, such as rent, insurance or certain salaries. This split helps you understand how much room the restaurant has to absorb a drop in demand, a supplier price rise or extra staff. Managing OPEX does not mean cutting everything.
It means knowing which costs protect quality and which do not deliver enough return. For example, cutting staff on a high-demand service can worsen waiting times and NPS, whereas negotiating an electricity tariff, adjusting orders or removing duplicate tools can improve margin without harming the experience.
Total OPEX = Cost of sales + Staff costs + General operating expenses
To calculate monthly OPEX, add up all the costs needed to operate during the period. A practical breakdown uses three blocks: cost of sales, such as food, drink and packaging; staff costs, including wages, Social Security contributions and extras; and general operating expenses, such as rent, utilities, maintenance, software, insurance, accountancy, marketing and commissions. You can also express it as a percentage of sales: OPEX to sales = Total OPEX / Net sales × 100. If a restaurant turns over €80,000 excluding VAT and its OPEX adds up to €70,000, OPEX to sales is 87.5%.
The operating margin left before other items is very thin, even though turnover looks high.
A city restaurant reviews May and sees net sales of €95,000. Product consumed comes to €28,500, staff costs to €31,000, rent to €8,200, utilities to €4,600, delivery commissions to €3,400, software and bookings to €1,100, cleaning and laundry to €2,300, maintenance to €900 and marketing to €1,700. Total OPEX is €81,700, equivalent to 86% of sales. That figure alone is not enough, so management breaks it down: food cost is under control, but delivery commissions are concentrated on low-margin dishes and energy costs have risen because of old cold rooms.
Instead of making across-the-board cuts, they adjust the delivery menu, renegotiate electricity, drop a duplicate tool and plan a future investment in commercial refrigeration. The following month OPEX falls by two points without any loss of service.
OPEX matters because it shows what it really costs to keep the restaurant alive. If you only look at sales, you can mistake volume for financial health. If you look at OPEX by category and as a percentage of sales, you can see where margin is leaking, which costs are structural, which depend on the sales mix and which operational decisions affect cash. It also helps you prepare budgets, compare sites, negotiate rent or supplier terms, decide whether to open longer hours, evaluate delivery and anticipate quiet months.
In multi-site businesses, OPEX lets you separate business-model problems, such as rent that is too high, from management problems, such as waste, unproductive hours or emergency purchases.
Zindra helps you control OPEX by linking purchasing, inventory, sales, clock-ins, staff costs, expenses and financial reporting. You can see the weight of each cost line on sales, compare periods and sites, spot variances against budget and understand how decisions such as menu changes, shifts, orders or sales channels affect operating profitability.
Tools and content to go deeper into this concept.
Prime cost (coste primo in Spanish) is food cost plus staff cost. It is the most complete measure of a restaurant's direct operating cost and should stay between 55% and 65% of turnover.
Cash flow in a restaurant is the movement of money in and out of the business. Managing cash well is vital for the restaurant's survival, even if it is profitable on paper.
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortisation) measures a restaurant's operating profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. It is the most widely used indicator for judging a business's real profitability.
The profit and loss statement (P&L) is the financial report that shows all of a restaurant's income and expenses for a period, revealing whether the business is making an operating profit or a loss.
A restaurant's variable costs are the expenses that change directly or proportionally with the level of sales or production, such as ingredients, drinks, delivery commissions or consumables used per service.
A restaurant's fixed costs are the expenses that stay relatively stable even when sales change, such as rent, insurance, licences, software or part of the core staff.
A restaurant's net profit margin is the percentage of sales left as final profit after deducting all costs: ingredients, staff, rent, utilities, commissions, operating taxes and other expenses.
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