Food cost by cuisine
Sushi restaurant food cost percentage
The highest food cost band of any format here, and the one least helped by a commodity index. A sushi bar's cost is fish, and fish is bought by the side, by grade and by day.
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 sushi bar are linked at the foot of this page.
The cost structure of a sushi bar
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 | 30–38% |
|---|---|
| Labour | 28–34% |
| Prime cost target | 62–68% |
| Implied by the two bands above | 58–72% |
The target is 4 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 sushi bar 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.
Fish is expensive, it is fabricated by hand with real yield loss, and it does not keep — three properties that each push the food cost band up. Labour is skilled and cannot be traded down for a machine the way a pizza oven trades for a cook. That combination is why the prime cost convention for sushi is the highest on this page, and why the format defends itself with ticket size rather than with a low percentage.
One plate, costed line by line
Eight pieces, 0.75 oz of fish each, served at a neighbourhood sushi bar rather than an omakase counter. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Salmon, farmed fillet6 oz of finished neta at a 75% fabrication yield after skin, pin bones and belly trim. | 8 oz as purchased | $5.90 | 87% |
| Sushi riceAbout 8 oz seasoned, which is the shari on eight pieces. | 3.5 oz dry | $0.32 | 5% |
| Rice vinegar, sugar, salt, kombu | per portion | $0.11 | 2% |
| Wasabi, pickled ginger, shiso | per plate | $0.34 | 5% |
| Soy sauce, dish, chopsticks | per cover | $0.13 | 2% |
| Plate cost | $6.80 | ||
Food cost
34.9%
$6.80 ÷ $19.50
Contribution margin
$12.70
per plate sold
Against the band
Inside the planning band.
band 30–38%
It lands inside the band and it is almost entirely one line. Nearly nine tenths of this plate is salmon, which means the menu's fate is decided in the fish order and nowhere else — no amount of rice discipline moves a plate that is almost entirely protein.
Three traps specific to this format
1
Yield measured once and never again
Fabrication yield moves with the fish. Farmed salmon sides arrive at different sizes and fat levels, and a 75% yield on one delivery is 68% on the next — a difference worth more per plate than most menu price rises. Weigh the trim for a week each season, not once at opening. See yield percentage.
2
The specials board that costs more than the menu
Daily fish is bought at daily prices and sold at a price somebody said out loud at family meal. If a special is not costed before service, it is not priced — it is a guess with a garnish. This is the one format where market price is a real mechanism rather than a euphemism.
3
Rolls subsidising nigiri, invisibly
A roll built on rice, avocado and a little trim can run under 20% food cost while a nigiri plate runs near 40%. Both are on the same menu at similar prices, so a mix that shifts toward nigiri raises your food cost with every ticket and nothing on the menu changed. Track it by menu mix, not by average.
What a sushi bar 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.
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.