Food cost by cuisine
Deli & sandwich shop food cost percentage
A format decided at the slicer. Protein is most of the plate, portioning is done by hand hundreds of times a day, and a two-ounce drift outruns any price you could have negotiated.
This is the numbers page
Bands, one plate costed to the packaging, and the commodities that plate is exposed to. No general costing advice — that lives in the guides, and the two most relevant to a sandwich shop are linked at the foot of this page.
The cost structure of a sandwich shop
Planning conventions, not research findings — the ranges an operator budgets against. Use them to sanity-check your own arithmetic, never as evidence about the industry.
| Food cost | 30–35% |
|---|---|
| Labour | 24–30% |
| Prime cost target | 56–62% |
| Implied by the two bands above | 54–65% |
The target is 3 points tighter than the two bands added together, which is the real operating constraint: run both food and labour at the top of their ranges and a sandwich shop misses its prime cost ceiling. One of the two has to sit below its high end all year, and which one is a strategy choice rather than an accident.
Sliced protein is the bulk of every ticket and there is no cooking process to add value to it, so the food cost band sits high — you are selling the ingredient close to how you bought it. Counter service and short cook lines keep labour modest, which is what makes the prime cost work. The lever in this format is portioning discipline, not purchasing: the protein is the plate.
One plate, costed line by line
Triple-decker on toast with chips and a pickle spear, counter service. Line prices are inputs we chose — plausible mid-2026 wholesale figures, not quotes. Replace them with yours and every number below recalculates on the same arithmetic.
| Line | Portion | Cost | Share of plate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sliced turkey breastWeighed spec. This is the line everything else on the plate is rounding error against. | 5 oz | $2.00 | 46% |
| BacontrackedRaw weight. Bacon loses 50–65% in the pan, so a cooked-weight recipe understates this line by about half. | 3 slices, 2.4 oz raw | $0.93 | 22% |
| BreadtrackedBought in. Tracked flour is an input to your baker's price, not your price. | 3 slices | $0.33 | 8% |
| Tomatotracked | 2 oz | $0.28 | 6% |
| Lettuce, mayo | per sandwich | $0.19 | 4% |
| Chips, pickle spear | 1 side | $0.42 | 10% |
| Paper, tray liner, bag | 1 order | $0.16 | 4% |
| Plate cost | $4.31 | ||
Food cost
29.7%
$4.31 ÷ $14.50
Contribution margin
$10.19
per plate sold
Against the band
Below the planning band.
band 30–35%
A whisker under the band, and nearly half of it is the turkey. Every management conversation in this format should start with the slicer setting and the scale on the make line — that one line moves more money than the rest of the plate combined.
What the last 12 months did to this plate
A model, not a measurement: the lines above that map to a tracked commodity, repriced to what they would have cost a year ago if each had moved exactly with its Bureau of Labor Statistics series. Untagged lines are held flat. Real invoices move by more or less than a national average — this shows which lines carry the risk, not what you paid.
| Line | Tracked series | 12-month move | A year ago | Today |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bacon | Bacon | −7.5% | $1.01 | $0.93 |
| Bread | Flour | −2.5% | $0.34 | $0.33 |
| Tomato | Tomatoes | +11.7% | $0.25 | $0.28 |
| Whole plate, modelled | $4.36 | $4.31 | ||
| Food cost at $14.50 | 30.1% | 29.7% | ||
Tracked lines moved this plate by −$0.05 over twelve months — a saving you keep on every one sold, unless the menu price moved with it. Series and methodology on the index methodology page.
Three traps specific to this format
1
The slicer is your pricing department
A 5 oz spec built by eye lands anywhere between 4.5 and 6.5 oz. At the input price above, a one-ounce drift is forty cents a sandwich — nearly three points of food cost, on the item you sell most of. A scale on the make line pays for itself in a week; see portion control.
2
The side treated as free
Chips and a pickle are a real line and they never get repriced when the sandwich does. A side that stays fixed while the sandwich price rises is fine; one that stays uncosted while its own price rises is a slow bleed nobody sees.
3
Costing bacon and roast meats at cooked weight
Bacon loses over half its weight in the pan and roasted deli meats lose a quarter in the oven. A recipe card written in cooked ounces and costed against an invoice price understates the two largest lines on the plate at once. See edible portion vs as-purchased.
What a sandwich shop is exposed to
Of the ten commodities we track from Bureau of Labor Statistics data, these are the ones that decide this format's food cost. Prices are US city averages, monthly, and we publish nothing that is estimated rather than measured.
Bacon
$6.58/lb
−7.5% over 12 months
On a large share of the menu and the most yield-sensitive item a deli buys. Both its price and its cook loss move the plate, and only one of the two shows up on an invoice.
Bacon prices and menu impact →Cheddar cheese
$5.74/lb
−5.0% over 12 months
On nearly every sandwich, portioned by hand, and cheap enough per slice that drift goes unnoticed until you multiply by the weekly count.
Cheddar cheese prices and menu impact →Tomatoes
$2.00/lb
+11.7% over 12 months
The most seasonal line on a sandwich. A winter tomato costs multiples of a summer one for a worse product, which is why the best delis quietly change the garnish rather than the price.
Tomatoes prices and menu impact →Flour
$0.54/lb
−2.5% over 12 months
Indirect. You buy bread, your baker buys flour — this series tells you whether a bread price rise came from the market or from your supplier.
Flour prices and menu impact →Our plate is a worked example. Yours is the one that pays the rent.
Photograph your menu and every dish comes back costed from your own supplier invoices — the same line-by-line arithmetic as the table above, recomputed the day a price moves, with the invoice line attached to the dish it changed.