F&B cost percentage (food and beverage cost ratio)

The F&B cost percentage shows the share of raw ingredient cost for food and beverage relative to F&B revenue, expressed as a percentage. It is one of the most direct steering levers for any hotel restaurant.

A ratio under 30% is the broadly accepted benchmark. Above that, kitchen and pricing start to drift apart -- usually quietly, rarely on purpose.

What we see in practice: A 50-room resort hotel with an in-house restaurant and EUR 410,000 in annual F&B revenue runs at a 34% cost ratio. Four points over benchmark sounds small. It works out to roughly EUR 16,500 in extra cost per year. The causes are familiar: no active recipe management, no monthly food cost check, portion drift nobody ever inspected. A hotel restaurant is not a self-runner. It is a business inside a business, with its own KPIs that need their own attention. Anyone reading only the year-end statement knows last year's cost ratio. Not this month's.