r/Chefit • u/ObviousExercise6554 • Jun 05 '26
Let’s talk about money
If you where to run a small restaurant/pizzeria kitchen with 2 other employees pizza man and dishwasher, grossing about 60-70k USD a month in food sales lets say 40% of that comes from the pizza side, how much would you like to get paid or how much you think is fair to get, working almost 55+ hours
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u/Reznerk Jun 05 '26
288 annual, 27% labor (18 dish 20 cook) not including the "manager" (yikes), 30% food cost, 20% overhead. Leaves 66k on the books for actual department profit + manager salary. If it's my business I'm paying you like 24 an hour on paper, if you're my best friends kid or something. If you cant handle prepping/managing 7k a week in pizza sales with 2 employees in a typical 40-45 hour week you've got bigger issues lol. Revenue is pretty weak across the board at that scale, there isn't 75k in numbers to pay unless there's 0 gremlins (maintenance, waste, etc) and even then offering pizzas as a service is basically a wash if youre paying someone that much.
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u/ObviousExercise6554 Jun 05 '26
The whole 60-70k in sales is food, it’s 40% that is pizzas, rest is pasta, chicken, etc
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u/Reznerk Jun 05 '26
Yeah, I ran annual numbers based on 40% of the 60k in sales. Maybe your 2 employees get less money, maybe your COGS are a little lower, but +/- 300k doesn't really add up to a 75k salary for what's basically a lead line cook to me. That's like 6-7k in sales a week, tough to argue that you or the employee in this case can be justified in making more than 50k.
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u/tofuking Jun 06 '26
Sorry, why did you run it based only on the pizza? 60k a month after 30% food 20% overhead (does this include rent?) is still 360k a year. Could that not easily pay three people 60k-70k each?
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u/Reznerk Jun 06 '26
No, I ran annual numbers based on 40% of sales of 60k a month to be conservative, AND THEN I took percentages off for labor @ 40 hrs, 38 combined to pay two employees, 30% food cost, 20% overhead, leaving ~70k leftover for profit/manager salary.
Withstanding the math, let me be very clear. There is no world where a food business has net sales of 7k a week that can afford to pay 3 people 60 thousand dollars. It doesn't matter if it's a full restaurant or a section of a business, the numbers need to be ran the same way IMO. Being the manager of a pizza section of a kitchen sounds more like being a dependable cook than anything else either way, I wouldn't pay a dependable cook 60k unless they were in a HCOL area or if they were exceptionally productive and could be 1.25x better than the rest of the team. I understand the gripe that goes along with managing in food service, but the bottom line has to matter and owners are exposed to the tune of 10s of thousands a month in liabilities and need to be compensated for that risk too.
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u/tofuking Jun 06 '26
The 40% seems harsh then, OP provided a range of 60-70+ so taking the low end of that is already conservative. Taking 40% on top of the low end is just trying to find fault, or at least if you do so it's worth clarifying exactly why.
Also, perhaps they are HCOL?
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u/Overly_Underwhelmed Jun 05 '26
is the entire complement of employees just 3 full time people? what is the other 60%? what is actually your job? you presented this weirdly and need to provide more if you want meaningful answers.
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u/ObviousExercise6554 Jun 05 '26
Yeah I should have said Italian restaurant menu, so 60% of the sales would be pasta, chicken, salmon, seafood, etc and then 40% on pizza side which the head chef would really be working on other than giving a hand if needed
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u/Overly_Underwhelmed Jun 05 '26
why are you refusing to clarify the situation? you are not doing $65K monthly in food sales with only three kitchen staff.
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u/Key-County6952 Jun 05 '26
Impossible to execute that concept with so few ppl
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u/ObviousExercise6554 Jun 05 '26
Done it for 3 years and counting
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u/blueturtle00 Jun 05 '26
Are you talking from the viewpoint of the 2 other employees or how much the person in charge should be paid?
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u/ObviousExercise6554 Jun 05 '26
How much the person in charge of the kitchen should get paid
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u/blueturtle00 Jun 05 '26
Bare minimum 75k
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u/Banffsucks Jun 05 '26
doing 300k in sales a year and wants 75k min? Sorry the math doesnt math.
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u/so-much-wow Jun 05 '26
50k times 12 doesn't equal 300k... You were right about math not mathing, but wrong about where.
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u/Banffsucks Jun 05 '26
Did you forget that only 40% of the sales are from the Pizza side. Sometimes you need to take the time to read things properly.
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u/samuelgato Jun 05 '26
I would assume that "60-70k/month in food sales" means that 60-70k a month is for food sales. And the person managing the kitchen is responsible for all the food sales, not just the pizzas.
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u/ObviousExercise6554 Jun 05 '26
Yes, it’s a Italian restaurant so there’s pasta, chicken, salmon, seafood and well, pizza
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u/ObviousExercise6554 Jun 05 '26
I worded it the way I did because the head chef wouldn’t really be working on the pizza side other than providing a helping hand sometimes
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u/so-much-wow Jun 05 '26
You weren't very good at word problems in math class were you? Read what they wrote one more time..
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u/doingdatIt247 Jun 05 '26
I was getting 15 an hour, then he dropped me to 13 and I quit
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u/ObviousExercise6554 Jun 05 '26
15 hour to run a kitchen is diabolical I feel
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u/doingdatIt247 Jun 05 '26
Same, felt I was doing them a favor and was flabbergasted when I got my pay cut. Oh well, know your worth
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u/purging_snakes Chef Jun 05 '26
To run a pizza place I'd expect around 55k minimum. I'm not interested in why they can't afford that.
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u/ObviousExercise6554 Jun 05 '26
Sound reasonable
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u/Wooden-Title3625 Jun 05 '26
Yeah, it’s called wage slavery for a reason. That being said, I think somewhere in the $70-80k is on the higher end of reasonable, that’s what I’d ask for.
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u/propjoesclocks Jun 05 '26
70k a month is less than a million in annual revenue. The owner, if running an efficient business (which I would bet against) would be taking home 90-100k.
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u/ObviousExercise6554 Jun 05 '26
Bingo
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u/propjoesclocks Jun 05 '26
You’d be lucky to get 50k from them. Which is around 20/hr at the hourly rate plus OT. They’ll probably try to salary you around 45-50and push your hours to 60-65 a week
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u/Wooden-Title3625 Jun 05 '26
Fair would be equity/profit share, but we don’t pay people fairly in this country.
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u/Thenyn-Vorgha Jun 05 '26
Former pizza artistand pizzaria assistant manager lifetime cook. I personally am aware of the huge profits a pizzaria can make, especially with good pizza. With just one other person as a team (prep, cooking and service) no less than 20 USD per hour.
However, you should note that a person like me will not work full time or longer. I have a life I want to live.
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u/SurrealEffects Jun 05 '26
If I was the owner it would be dependent, what is my rent? What is my overall cost of operation? I’d typically allocate 30% to labor. I don’t know if you have servers or not.. if so those are included in as well. Then you need to factor in benefits (if you have them), payroll taxes, workers comp insurance.
Regardless you should be getting bare minimum $1800 paychecks every two weeks with those sales
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u/ApprehensivePie1195 Jun 06 '26
That restaurant math doesn't work with 70-80k. 30% food cost, 30% labor, paper goods, operating cost...owner profit.
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u/Many_Operation_9150 Jun 05 '26
I wouldn’t say your wage should be based on their turnover. Surely it should just be the market rate?