The True Hourly Cost of Back-of-House Prep (Beyond Wages)

At first glance, back-of-house prep labor seems straightforward: pay a line cook $17 per hour, ask them to follow a simple recipe and you’ve covered your bases. But in reality, the true cost of in-house prep runs much deeper. When your team spends hours making sauces, soups, or other staples, the expenses aren’t limited to wages, they ripple across morale, training, turnover, and even mistakes that impact consistency and guest experience.

If you’ve ever struggled with high turnover or quality slips in your kitchen, chances are you’re paying more for “simple” prep work than you realize.

Why This Matters

In today’s restaurant environment, labor is one of the most expensive and unpredictable line items. According to industry data, back-of-house wages average $17 per hour nationwide, and turnover in hourly restaurant staff hovers at 70% annually. That means the cost of prepping a sauce isn’t just $17, it’s the time it takes to train someone new, the mistakes made along the way, and the burnout of asking staff to repeat tasks that add little to their professional development.

Meanwhile, every hour spent whisking sauce or reducing stock is an hour not spent on the guest experience,  the true driver of loyalty and repeat business.

Industry Insight / Hidden Costs

1. Turnover and Training

Every time a prep cook leaves, managers scramble to retrain replacements. If a sauce recipe takes 4–5 hours a week to teach and practice, multiplied across dozens of locations, the cost balloons. Add in lost productivity during training and you’re looking at thousands of dollars annually per store.

2. Mistakes and Inconsistency

No two cooks make a sauce exactly the same. Too much salt, not enough reduction, or a wrong portion can mean inconsistency across locations, frustrating customers who expect their favorite menu item to taste the same every visit. Mistakes often lead to food waste, which drives up food costs even further.

3. Staff Morale

Making the same sauce day after day is repetitive, low-value work that often frustrates skilled back-of-house employees. Cooks want to be creative, solve problems, and feel like part of the culinary process — not just churn out gallons of the same recipe. Low morale increases turnover, which circles back to higher training and hiring costs.

4. Hidden Wages Beyond the Clock

That $17/hour wage doesn’t include payroll taxes, benefits, overtime, or scheduling inefficiencies. The real hourly cost of an employee is often 25–30% higher than base wages, meaning a $17/hour cook could actually cost closer to $21–22 per hour when all factors are included.

How Outsourcing Solves the Problem

By outsourcing core prep items like sauces and soups to a contract manufacturer, restaurant groups eliminate these hidden costs:

• Consistency at Scale: Every batch tastes the same, protecting brand integrity across locations.

• Labor Savings: Free up cooks from repetitive prep so they can focus on line execution and speed of service.

• Morale Boost: When cooks aren’t tied to mundane prep, job satisfaction rises — reducing turnover.

• Lower Overall Cost: Even if outsourcing looks like a line-item expense, the hidden costs of wages + turnover + training + mistakes make in-house prep significantly more expensive.

  
  

At Tall Hat Foods, our chef-led R&D team ensures your proprietary recipes retain their flavor and character, while our SQF-certified facility guarantees consistency, safety, and scalability. Instead of retraining cooks every six months, you get sauces delivered exactly how you need them, every time.

A Better Way Forward

At the end of the day, your team wasn’t hired to spend hours whisking sauces or babysitting prep. They were hired to create memorable guest experiences, execute your menu flawlessly, and keep your brand growing.

That’s where we come in. At Tall Hat Foods, we partner with restaurant operators and R&D chefs to take the repetitive, costly, and morale-draining prep work off your plate so your teams can focus on what really drives velocity in your stores.

Whether it’s a signature sauce, a seasonal LTO, or rethinking how back-of-house prep impacts your labor model, our chef-led R&D team and SQF-certified manufacturing facility are here to help.

We would love to explore how Tall Hat Foods can support your culinary and operational goals. Book a quick call with us to see how outsourcing sauces and other back-of-house staples could save you money, strengthen consistency, and boost team morale.