Sales per labor hour (SPLH) is total sales divided by total labor hours worked during the same period.
Formula: SPLH = Total Sales ÷ Total Labor Hours
Why SPLH matters even if you already track labor cost %
Labor cost percentage and SPLH measure two different things. Labor cost % asks "is labor too expensive relative to sales?" — but a low labor cost % can come from underpaying staff rather than from running productive shifts. SPLH asks "is each labor hour producing enough revenue?" — which is the productivity question independent of wage levels.
Operators who run both metrics catch over-scheduling earlier. A Tuesday lunch shift with five servers on a slow day might pass labor-cost-% review (because lunch sales are low so the percentage stays in band) but fail SPLH review (because $400 in sales across 20 server-hours is $20/hour — well below the productivity benchmark).
The industry-standard ranges
- Full-service casual independent: $50–70 per labor hour at the all-staff total. Healthy operators run toward the upper end.
- Fine dining: $80–120 per labor hour. Higher check averages compensate for the higher service-staff-to-cover ratio.
- Quick-service restaurants: $30–45 per labor hour. Smaller staffs, smaller check averages, but tighter scheduling discipline.
Below the lower end of your concept's band, the schedule is over-staffed for the volume; above the upper end, the staff is under-resourced and service quality is at risk.
How to calculate SPLH
- Pull total sales for the period (typically a shift, a daypart, or a week).
- Pull total labor hours for the same period — clocked hours from the POS or scheduling system.
- Divide.
Example: $9,200 Saturday dinner sales, 145 total labor hours across all stations. SPLH = $9,200 ÷ 145 = $63.45/hour — solidly inside the full-service casual band.
Common operator mistakes
- Reviewing SPLH only at the weekly aggregate. The weekly number smooths out the slow-shift over-scheduling that the daypart-level number would catch.
- Excluding salaried managers from labor hours. If the manager works the floor, those hours produce sales — count them. Otherwise SPLH overstates productivity.
- Setting an SPLH target without daypart context. Lunch SPLH and dinner SPLH live in different bands. Apply daypart-specific targets, not a single number across all hours.
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