What should labour cost be as a percentage of restaurant revenue?

GGB reads labour against a published ceiling of 30% of revenue, and food plus labour together — prime cost — against 62%. These are diagnostic bands, not promises, and service-heavy concepts naturally sit differently from counter formats. The band tells you whether to look; the roster laid over your covers-by-hour curve tells you where. A flat headcount cut is rarely the fix — the durable fix is shape, moving hours from where demand is not to where it is.

From Five Nights to a Tighter Restaurant P&L: Food Cost, Labour, Rent, the Platform's Cut and the Weekly Read — the full reading, with the method behind this answer.