What is a basis point worth to a restaurant group?
A basis point is one hundredth of a percent. Trivial as a number, decisive as a dollar figure once it is multiplied by system sales.
Your assumptions
70 basis points of system sales
$700,000
On $100.00M of annual system sales
| System sales | $100,000,000 |
| Per store, per year | $14,000 |
| Per store, per month | $1,167 |
| 25 bps | $250,000 |
| 50 bps | $500,000 |
| 100 bps (1%) | $1,000,000 |
| 300 bps (3%) | $3,000,000 |
Planning estimates only. Not tax, accounting or legal advice.
Why finance people talk in basis points
One basis point is 0.01%. The unit exists because percentages get ambiguous when you start changing them: moving from 2.9% to 2.3% is a 0.6 percentage point improvement, a 60 basis point improvement, and a 21% reduction, all at once. Basis points remove the ambiguity.
For a restaurant group, basis points are also the honest unit of cost recovery. No single category delivers a transformation. Payments gives back 30–80 bps of card volume, procurement 90–200 bps of sales, delivery recovery 10–40 bps. Stack four of them and you have a margin story.
Common questions, answered in dollars
What does 50 basis points mean for a restaurant? At $2M average unit volume, $10,000 per store per year — $500,000 across a 50-unit system.
How much does 70 basis points of payment processing cost a 100-unit chain? At $2M average unit volume and 85% card share, roughly $1.19M per year in avoidable fees.
What does a 3% margin improvement mean for a $50M restaurant group? $1.5M of annual operating profit — equivalent to opening twelve new stores at a 12% margin.
Want the full picture, not one category?
The full savings calculator models every category at once — payments, food, labor, delivery, benefits, fuel and payroll tax credits — and emails you the breakdown.
Calculate my potential savingsFrequently asked
One hundred. A basis point is one hundredth of one percent, so 25 bps is 0.25% and 300 bps is 3%.
Because it makes categories comparable across a portfolio of different unit volumes, and because it keeps the conversation on rate improvement rather than on one-time wins that reverse the following year.
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