Free tool
What Does Your Cafe Need to Make Each Week to Break Even?
Enter your fixed costs, wage bill, and food cost target — get the minimum weekly revenue your cafe needs to cover everything. Then see how close you are.
Enter your weekly costs
Fixed costs
Monthly rent ÷ 4.33. Example: $6,750/month → $1,559/week.
Gas and electricity — prorate bi-monthly bills as needed.
TapTouch, Lightspeed, Square, MYOB, etc. — divide monthly cost by 4.33.
Insurance, cleaning, equipment lease — anything that doesn't vary with trade.
Wage cost
Your best estimate of a normal week's wages across all staff.
Food cost target
The % of revenue you plan to spend on ingredients and supplier invoices. Australian benchmark: 28–30% for a full-menu cafe.
Compare to last week
Enter to see how far above or below break-even you landed.
Enter your fixed costs and wages to see your break-even revenue.
How it works
Enter your weekly fixed costs
Rent (monthly ÷ 4.33), gas and electricity prorated weekly, and subscriptions like TapTouch or Lightspeed. These costs don't change week to week — they're the floor your cafe has to cover before you've paid a single staff member or bought a single ingredient.
Enter your average weekly wage bill
Your best estimate of a normal week's wages across all staff. This is the largest variable cost for most cafes — typically 28–35% of revenue. If your wages are higher on weekends due to Fair Work penalty rates, use a blended weekly average.
Enter your target food cost percentage
The percentage of revenue you plan to spend on ingredients and supplier invoices. The Australian benchmark for a full-menu cafe is 28–30%. If you're not sure, start with 30%.
Optionally: enter last week's actual revenue
If you enter your actual revenue for the week, the tool shows how far above or below break-even you finished — your margin of safety in dollar terms.
Why it matters
Most cafe owners have never calculated this number precisely.
Break-even is the most concrete financial concept in any business — but most cafe owners have never calculated it precisely. They have a rough sense of what “a good week” looks like. They don't have the specific number that separates a good week from a loss-making one.
For a Melbourne cafe paying $6,750/month in rent, with a $6,500/week average wage bill and a 30% food cost target, the break-even weekly revenue is around $16,500. A week at $15,800 doesn't feel catastrophically different from a week at $17,000 — but one is above the line and one is below it.
Knowing your break-even number changes how you respond to a slow week. Instead of “this week was a bit quiet,” you know: “this week we finished $700 below break-even, which means we need to recover that margin in the next two weeks, or adjust our cost structure.” That's not stress — that's clarity.
Start today
See your break-even number every week — updated from your real data.
Facit tracks your actual revenue, wages, and food cost against your targets so you know every Monday whether you're above or below break-even — without the manual calculation.
No credit card required.
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