What is the 30/30/30 rule for restaurants?

In the restaurant business, 30/30/30 is a budgeting rule of thumb for owners: roughly 30% of sales go to food costs, 30% to labor and 30% to overhead, leaving about 10% as profit. It has nothing to do with when customers should arrive or leave, and there's no standard etiquette rule by that name.

Parts Town, which supplies restaurant equipment parts, describes it as a guideline for keeping operating costs under control, with the 10% profit as an ideal outcome rather than a promise. Real numbers drift. A 2019 WBUR explainer on restaurant money gave wider targets, with food at 20 to 30 percent of revenue and labor at 30 to 40 percent, plus about 30 percent for overhead and 10 percent profit.

Outside restaurants, the most widely covered 30-30-30 is a viral morning routine: 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking, then 30 minutes of low-intensity exercise. TODAY traces it to Tim Ferriss's book The 4-Hour Body and says it spread on TikTok. A Cleveland Clinic dietitian notes that researchers haven't studied the routine itself. It's a diet idea, not a dining one.

If you searched this hoping for a rule about how close to closing you can show up, no widely used numbered rule covers that. The usual advice is to arrive at least 30 minutes before the kitchen closes, call ahead if you're cutting it close, and order quickly once you sit down. Our page on how late is too late covers the details.

Late Night Food Spots shows a leave-by time for each listing, with a 30 minute buffer for sit-down places.