Coffee Shop Labor Cost Percentage: Benchmark and Sources

Labor cost percentage compares a shop’s labor spending with its sales. The calculation is simple; choosing a comparable benchmark takes more care. Coffee franchise FDDs disclose results for specific groups of stores, the National Restaurant Association (NRA) reports broader restaurant medians, and vendor estimates offer a separate kind of guidance. Their labor definitions and sales bases are not interchangeable.

How do you calculate labor cost percentage?

Restaurant365’s guide gives the formula: labor cost percentage = total labor cost ÷ total sales for the same period × 100.

Example (hypothetical): $40,000 monthly sales; $11,200 fully loaded labor (wages, payroll taxes, benefits) = $11,200 ÷ $40,000 × 100 = 28%.

For your budget, include hourly and salaried pay, overtime, employer payroll taxes and benefits, plus owner wages where applicable. Restaurant365’s vendor guidance, checked 2026-10-14, includes these labor components. Keep the sales base consistent between periods, and compare a source’s labor definition with your own before adopting its percentage.

What coffee franchise FDDs disclose about labor

The table uses Item 19 dollar figures from the linked Restaurant Finance Monitor FDD copies, checked 2026-10-14. Dates are the FDD cover dates, even where the hosted filename says 2025. Every percentage below is labor or payroll dollars ÷ the named sales dollars × 100, rounded to two decimal places. Ratios of group averages are not medians of individual stores’ labor percentages.

Brand	FDD issued	Labor as % (arithmetic on printed figures)	Stores covered	Item 19 definition of labor
Scooter’s Coffee, kiosks	April 3, 2026	$251,388 ÷ $998,869 Gross Sales × 100 = 25.17%; $251,388 ÷ $923,805 Net Sales × 100 = 27.21%	621 reporting franchised kiosks operating throughout 2025; group averages, Section C	In-store wages including manager and payroll taxes; excludes employee benefits and overhead employees. Exact note 6 below.
Scooter’s Coffee, end caps	April 3, 2026	$275,312 ÷ $1,082,458 Gross Sales × 100 = 25.43%; $275,312 ÷ $994,655 Net Sales × 100 = 27.68%	45 reporting franchised end caps operating throughout 2025; group averages, Section C	Same note 6 definition as kiosks.
BIGGBY Coffee	April 30, 2026	$234,618 ÷ $778,108 Gross Sales × 100 = 30.15%	216 reporting franchised drive-through stores; 2025 averages, Chart 2	Employee and manager labor, hiring and training, workers’ compensation insurance and payroll taxes; excludes officer/guaranteed payments, health insurance/retirement, organizational support staff and management fees.
Toastique	January 9, 2026	Each uses Total Gross Sales: Alexandria $207,474 ÷ $856,620 × 100 = 24.22%; Navy Yard $231,699 ÷ $887,124 × 100 = 26.12%; The Wharf $189,061 ÷ $835,129 × 100 = 22.64%; Dupont Circle $170,815 ÷ $722,774 × 100 = 23.63%; Union Market $316,489 ÷ $1,007,286 × 100 = 31.42%	Five separately reported company-owned outlets, 2025; individual outlet ratios	Gross wages for employees preparing and serving menu items, including general and assistant managers, and compensation paid to an owner operator. Expense amounts printed in parentheses are shown here as positive costs.
Ziggi’s Coffee	March 31, 2026	Each uses Actual Gross Sales: drive-through A $317,646 ÷ $1,111,512 × 100 = 28.58%; B $275,199 ÷ $1,106,735 × 100 = 24.87%; C $329,587 ÷ $1,136,724 × 100 = 28.99%; D $245,726 ÷ $840,139 × 100 = 29.25%; cafe with drive-through A $204,474 ÷ $629,117 × 100 = 32.50%; B $292,112 ÷ $904,857 × 100 = 32.28%	Four affiliate drive-through shops and two affiliate cafes with drive-throughs operating throughout 2025, Tables A and B; one shop per ratio	Item 19 labels the line Labor Costs but does not specify its components. Actual Gross Sales deducts discounts and complimentary employee products from Total Sales.
Ellianos	March 17, 2026	2025: $378,446 ÷ $1,561,344 Gross Sales × 100 = 24.24%; $378,446 ÷ $1,484,432 Net Sales × 100 = 25.49%. 2024: $346,773 ÷ $1,459,045 Gross Sales × 100 = 23.77%; $346,773 ÷ $1,393,690 Net Sales × 100 = 24.88%. The FDD’s own table prints 25.7% (2025) and 25.1% (2024) of net sales	12 officer-operated traditional stores for full 2025; nine for full 2024; average dollar figures, Table 3	Payroll Expenses includes hourly labor, store-manager and assistant-manager wages, payroll taxes and workers’ compensation insurance; excludes area-manager compensation, bonuses, mileage, vacation pay and paid time off.
PJ’s Coffee	April 10, 2026	$198,350 ÷ $967,132 Gross Sales × 100 = 20.51%; $198,350 ÷ $919,992 Net Sales × 100 = 21.56% (the FDD prints 21.6%)	Seven affiliate-owned units operating throughout 2025; average figures	Payroll Expense includes employee salaries and wages, including management, payroll taxes, workers compensation insurance and payroll processing fees.
The Human Bean	February 25, 2026; amended May 5, 2026	Payroll expenses: $286,587.85 ÷ $891,136.11 Gross Sales × 100 = 32.16% (the FDD prints 32.2%)	12 affiliate-owned stores operating throughout 2025; average figures, Table 1	Payroll includes an hourly manager rate. Payroll taxes ($27,763.54) and employee benefits ($555.98) are separate lines, excluded from this payroll-only ratio. Item 19 also excludes owner income/expenses, bookkeeping/payroll processing/accounting and part-time district-manager expenses.

Scooter’s Item 19, Section C, note 6 states:

The term “Labor Costs” includes wages for in-store employees including the manager and payroll taxes but does not include employee benefits. The costs of overhead employees, such as a regional manager, are not included in the labor calculations above.

Scooter’s Gross Sales equals Net Sales plus Discounts. Its 621-kiosk cost-reporting group is the relevant denominator population here, not a larger sales-only group elsewhere in Item 19. Ellianos prints payroll percentages of 25.7% for 2025 and 25.1% for 2024; the table above instead shows the requested arithmetic on its printed average dollar figures, which produces different ratios. The Human Bean’s payroll-only ratio excludes its separately printed taxes and benefits, so it is not a fully loaded labor percentage.

Checked 2026-10-14, with no Item 19 labor figure: 7 Brew, FDD issued May 11, 2026. Caribou Coffee’s April 28, 2026 FDD has an Item 19 labor definition, but its Table 4 numeric chart values are absent from the supplied text copy; no labor percentage is verifiable from that copy, so none is included here.

These are historical figures for the disclosed units, not projections and not profit figures. Store selection, ownership, format, period and labor definitions differ. Item 19 gives these cautions:

• Scooter’s: “Some outlets have sold/earned these amounts. Your individual results may differ. There is no assurance you will sell/earn as much.”
• BIGGBY: “Some franchises have sold this amount. Your individual results may differ. There is no assurance that you will sell as much.”
• Toastique: “Some Outlets have earned this amount. Your individual results may differ. There is no assurance that you’ll earn as much.”
• Ziggi’s: “Some ZIGGI’S Coffee Shops have sold this amount. Your individual results may differ. There is no assurance you will sell as much.”
• Ellianos: “Some outlets have earned this amount. Your individual results may differ. There is no assurance that you’ll earn as much.”
• PJ’s: “Some franchises sold these amounts. Your individual results may differ. There is no assurance that you will sell as much.”
• The Human Bean: “Some outlets have sold or earned this amount. Your individual results may differ. There is no assurance you’ll sell or earn as much.”

What is a good labor cost percentage for a coffee shop?

Taxfyle’s coffee-shop guide, checked 2026-10-14, gives 20-30% of revenue as a vendor estimate. Taxfyle attributes that range to the NRA, but that attribution is unverified in the supplied NRA research. It should not be presented as an NRA coffee-shop benchmark.

The National Restaurant Association’s 2025 Restaurant Operations Data Abstract analysis reports 2024 median salaries and wages, including benefits, of 31.7% of sales for limited-service restaurants and 36.5% for fullservice restaurants. The Abstract is based on financial and operating data from more than 900 restaurant operators nationwide. These are restaurant survey medians, not coffee-shop-specific targets. The association says the data is not intended to represent standards or goals for individual restaurants.

Use the FDD rows to understand the disclosed store groups and the NRA medians as broader context. Neither establishes what your own shop should spend. A benefits-excluding FDD percentage cannot be compared directly with a benefits-including budget without adjusting the underlying costs.

The levers that actually move the number

Restaurant365 and Taxfyle recommend scheduling against sales and cross-training in their vendor guidance, checked 2026-10-14. Use those ideas as operating checks, and measure changes against actual hours and service times.

• Schedule to demand. Compare hourly POS sales with paid hours before changing shifts. The punch-card time clock guide covers ways to record the hours that feed the labor calculation.
• Cross-train. Plan which employees can cover register, bar and food preparation, then test whether the schedule covers those stations during both busy and quiet periods.
• Review mobile ordering and POS workflow. Check how orders reach the bar and where staff still intervene. The self-order kiosk guide for small coffee shops covers POS integration and hardware fit when evaluating customer-entered orders.
• Measure bar prep speed. Time the milk-preparation step and include cleaning and setup when evaluating equipment. The automatic milk frother guide compares equipment requirements and operating limits; do not assume a payroll reduction from a faster step alone.

Track labor against your real monthly budget

Use the monthly budget template's labor, cost of goods and occupancy lines, with group subtotals and percentages of monthly sales. Plus the due-diligence kit.

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Open the coffee shop monthly budget template to enter your own figures. Use the staffing calculator to test a schedule and the menu pricing calculator to examine the sales side.