Kitchen GP bonuses: how to set one that doesn’t backfire

A kitchen GP bonus sounds simple: hit the margin, earn the money. Done well it's the fairest deal in hospitality, because the chef finally shares in a number they mostly control. Done badly it pays your kitchen to shrink portions and hide waste. The difference is all in the design: a fair target, a bonus sized off the actual prize, and a measurement both sides trust. Here's how to build one that survives contact with a real kitchen.

This question comes up constantly among licensees, and the answers people trade are usually a percentage someone half-remembers from a previous head chef's contract. My own site is wet-led, so my kitchen exposure is small, but the GP maths is the same maths I live in on the bar side, and the failure patterns are identical. It's also a question the trade press has barely touched in twenty years, which is why everyone's guessing.

Start with a fair target, not a fantasy one

Before any money is mentioned, you need to know what your kitchen's GP actually is now, measured properly over at least two or three months. Not the theoretical GP off the menu costings. The real one: opening food stock, plus purchases, minus closing stock, against food sales. If you don't count food stock monthly, start there, because a bonus scheme built on a number nobody measures is a row with a start date.

Then set the target from evidence, not ambition. The most recent segmented benchmark data has pub food GP around 65% for a community local, and I'd call 60 to 68% doing well depending on your menu and your price point. The full breakdown is in my pub GP benchmarks guide. If your kitchen is running at 58%, a 65% target next quarter isn't a stretch goal, it's a message that the bonus isn't really meant to be earned. Two points of improvement per quarter, held for the whole quarter, is a serious achievement worth paying for.

Size the bonus off the prize, not off a vibe

The tidiest rule I've seen comes from Evans & Co, hospitality accountants, writing in April 2026: the total cost of the bonus, including employer's National Insurance and pension, should come to roughly 20% of the extra profit it generates. The business keeps 80% of the improvement, the person who made it happen gets a real cheque, and the scheme can never cost more than it earns.

Worked example. A pub doing £3,000 a week in food sales moves its measured GP from 58% to 63% and holds it. That's £150 a week, £7,800 a year of extra gross profit. The 20% rule gives you a bonus pot of about £1,560 all-in. Employer's NI at 15% plus a 3% pension contribution means about £1,320 of that reaches the chef, £330 a quarter. Not life-changing, but real money for a real result, and the pub is £6,200 a year better off. If the improvement is bigger, the cheque is bigger. That's the point.

Evans & Co's other warning is worth taking straight: don't announce a figure until you've proved the target is measurable and affordable. A bonus promised in the excitement of a quiet Tuesday and quietly withdrawn in February does more damage than never offering one.

A GP-only bonus pays for smaller portions

This is a design fault, not a character fault, so build for it rather than bracing for it. If the only number that pays is GP%, then the scheme literally rewards lighter plates and cheaper substitutions, and it rewards waste that never makes it into the book. Your chef doesn't have to be cynical for this to happen. The incentive does the work all by itself.

The fix is to pay on GP inside a small frame of conditions: portion specs followed (spot-check a few plates a week against the spec, openly, as routine rather than ambush), the waste log kept properly, and complaints or returns staying at normal levels. Evans & Co make the same point more broadly: target a small set of numbers together, GP alongside labour and waste, never one number alone. A chef who hits 63% by tightening prep waste and buying better has earned the money. A chef who hits it by making the fish pie smaller has cost you regulars you'll never see leave.

Measurement is the whole scheme

Every kitchen bonus argument I've ever heard traces back to the same root: the number wasn't trusted. So make the measurement boring and shared. A proper food count at month end, done the same way every time, with the chef present or at least able to see exactly how it was built. Waste logged as it happens, not reconstructed on the 30th. Sales from the till, deliveries from the invoices, no adjustments made after the fact without both names on them.

And put it in writing before the first quarter starts: what's measured, what's excluded, when it pays, and what happens in the messy cases. A freezer breakdown, a menu relaunch, a three-week closure. Decide those rules while everyone's friendly. The scheme should run off numbers both of you can point at, which is exactly the discipline a regular stocktake rhythm gives you on the wet side too.

Supplier price rises are not your chef's fault

Here's the case nobody writes into the scheme and everybody hits. Beef goes up 12% in October. Your chef changed nothing, cooked nothing differently, and the GP drops two points anyway. If the bonus dies with it, you've just taught the kitchen that the scheme is rigged against them, and you're right back to nobody caring about the number.

Two clean ways to handle it. Either the target gets reviewed when a costed ingredient moves more than an agreed amount, which means keeping cost prices current as invoices arrive rather than once a year. Or you pay on a GP the chef can actually control: measured GP with the price movement stripped out, so a dearer input triggers a menu-price conversation with you instead of silently eating the kitchen's bonus. Both work. Silence doesn't. The wet side has an identical problem when the brewery list moves, which I've covered in the tied price rises guide, and the answer is the same: track the input prices, or the GP number lies to you about whose fault things are.

Keep it whole-kitchen, keep it quarterly

Pay quarterly rather than annually. A December cheque for a February performance motivates nobody, and Evans & Co's example scheme, £5,000 a year for a manager, paid quarterly for exactly that reason. And think hard before making it head-chef-only. The KP who weighs the bins and the second who preps tight both move the number. A pot split across the kitchen, weighted however you like, buys you a team watching the waste instead of one person arguing with the count. With kitchen wages where the 2026 living wage rise has pushed them, a bonus that keeps a good team together is doing two jobs at once.

Common questions

What GP% should a pub kitchen bonus be set at?

Set it from your own measured baseline, moving toward the benchmark range of roughly 60 to 68% for pub food, around 65% for a typical community local. A target more than two or three points above your current measured GP per quarter is a target designed not to pay.

How much should a kitchen GP bonus be worth?

Size it off the improvement: total bonus cost, including employer's NI and pension, at about 20% of the extra profit the improvement generates. On a £3,000-a-week food operation gaining five GP points, that's roughly £330 a quarter in the chef's hand.

Should the bonus be on GP% alone?

No. GP alone rewards smaller portions and hidden waste. Pay on GP alongside portion-spec checks, an honest waste log and steady complaint levels, and review the target when supplier prices move materially.

What if supplier prices rise during the bonus period?

Agree the rule in advance: either the target is reviewed when a key ingredient moves beyond a set threshold, or the bonus GP is calculated with price movements stripped out. A chef should be paid on what they control, and input prices aren't it.