In this article
Nobody calls the police because a teaspoon is missing. That's exactly why shrinkage is the one cost in your restaurant that never gets a name — no supplier invoices you for it, no camera catches it, and yet it disappears from your drawers and cupboards every single week.
You know breakage. A server drops a tray, a guest knocks a glass off a table, and you know exactly what that costs — it's literally on your inventory sheet as an expected cost. Shrinkage is the other side of the same drawer: things that don't break, they're just not there the next time you count. No shard, no sound, no moment anyone saw it happen.
Retail has had a word and an accounting line for this for decades. In a restaurant it gets, at most, a sigh while counting flatware for a big party and finding three spoons short again. Nobody tracks it separately, so nobody sees how large it actually adds up to be.
This article lines up seven numbers — from how much cutlery an average restaurant loses weekly to what a London cocktail bar did when guests kept walking off with its menu — and ends with a calculator that turns your own figures into a yearly amount. Not to accuse guests or staff, but to make visible a cost that today sits on no line of your books at all.
One thing up front: the exact amounts in this article are illustrative, built on figures from hospitality and retail research cited throughout. Where a source is itself cautious about its own precision, we say so. The point isn't the exact number — it's that a number exists where you currently have none at all.
Why shrinkage never feels like a cost
Breakage has a moment. Something falls, it makes a sound, someone sweeps up the pieces — you remember it, so you budget for it. Shrinkage has no moment. The spoon is there on Monday, and by Friday you count three short, with nobody able to say when, how, or by whom.
That's why each piece alone never feels expensive enough to complain about. One spoon costs a couple of euros. Twelve spoons a week feels like 'we need to top up the cutlery again' — a shopping list, not a cost line. Only on an annual basis does what it adds up to become visible, and almost nobody counts on an annual basis.
That's exactly why the seven numbers below matter: they move shrinkage from 'something that happens now and then' to 'an amount you can calculate' — the one thing every other cost in your restaurant already has.
The ultimate guide Restaurant Finance: the Complete Guide From financing to cash flow to the costs that never show up on an invoice: everything about your restaurant's money, in one guide. Open the guideThe 7 numbers, and what each one tells you
Every number below comes from hospitality or retail research, flagged where a source is itself cautious about its own precision. Together they build up to the calculator at the end.
1. A dozen of each piece, every week
A 2026 staff survey by the US food outlet Food Republic found the same pattern again and again: an average mid-sized restaurant loses roughly a dozen pieces of a given flatware type every week — part stolen, part accidentally thrown out with food waste, and nobody tracking it separately.
Twelve spoons a week is over six hundred spoons fifty weeks later. At a typical replacement price of a few euros a piece, that's already an amount, for spoons alone, that most restaurants have no separate line for.
A relative ranking from hospitality-staff surveys of what guests and staff most often take home — not exact percentages, but a clear pattern.
Source: hospitality-staff surveys (Food Republic, The Takeout, Tasting Table, Daily Meal, 2026). The order summarises several independent surveys, not a single measurement.
2. 2% budgeted, 3 to 4% actual
Bar-operations guidance typically works with a budgeted loss of around 2% on glassware and small equipment — the margin you build in for normal wear and the occasional breakage. In practice, the real outcome more often lands around 3 to 4%, and that's before any deliberate shrinkage is even added on top.
That gap of one to two percentage points is loss you've already miscounted for — before you count a single piece that didn't break, it just walked off. It's the first place most restaurants already misread their own budget.
3. Half as many — a matter of glassware choice
The same sources that quote the budgeting gap above also point to a concrete lever: a bar using heavy, sturdy glassware breaks or loses roughly half as many pieces as one running thin-walled cocktail coupes. Not because staff are more careful — the glass itself simply survives more.
It's the one number in this article you can act on without a single conversation with staff: your next glassware order is a choice, not a behaviour change.
4. 20 to 25% of stock, every year
For bars specifically — where drink stock and glassware get tracked together — loss-prevention sources from the bar-operations industry cite annual shrinkage of 20 to 25% of stock, running into several thousand euros a month for a mid-sized venue. That figure measures drinks and glass together, not glassware alone — cited here as an order of magnitude, not an exact glass-loss percentage.
It's the largest number in this article, and the least visible: nobody gets an invoice at the end of the month labelled 'shrinkage'. The amount is hidden inside every other cost line at once.
The tip is what most restaurants already count as normal wear. The mass below it is what actually walks off in a year, at this article's example rate.
Illustrative, built on the numbers above: 2% budgeted loss against a yearly amount at twelve pieces a week. Your own restaurant may sit higher or lower — enter your own figures in the calculator below.
5. €18,000 to €27,000 — the budget shrinkage hides inside
US restaurant-advisory sources typically cite a first year of around $20,000 for smallware — cutlery, glassware, tableware — and then $30,000 or more a year after that as a planning figure for ongoing replacement at a mid-sized venue. Converted, that's somewhere between €18,000 and €27,000, as an order of magnitude.
That budget covers everything: normal wear, breakage, and shrinkage, all lumped onto one line. Nobody breaks it out, so nobody knows what share of it simply never came back. The calculator below makes exactly that distinction for your own restaurant.
6. Since 2010, a new deck every year
London cocktail bar Nightjar has printed its drinks menu as a pack of playing cards since 2010, and releases a new edition every year. The reason is disarmingly honest: guests were taking the cards home as souvenirs anyway, so the bar turned it into a habit instead of a loss.
It's the one place in this article where shrinkage isn't fought — it's flipped. Of everything that disappears, the menu is the most commonly cited 'souvenir' in hospitality-staff surveys — which is exactly why it's also the easiest to turn from a cost into a reason to come back.
7. Your own number
At twelve pieces a week, an average replacement price of a few euros a piece and fifty weeks open, the calculator below lands at roughly €182 a month and €2,100 a year — illustrative, built on exactly the assumptions from the numbers above.
That annual amount is about 8% of what hospitality sources recommend budgeting for annual cutlery-and-glassware replacement. Enter your own numbers below to see where your restaurant stands.
The calculator: what your own shrinkage adds up to
Three numbers about your own restaurant — how many pieces you typically lose a week, what replacement costs, and how many weeks you're open — become a yearly amount below.
Enter your own estimate, or leave the article's example numbers in place to see what an average restaurant, according to the sources above, loses every year.
The calculator: what your own shrinkage adds up to
Three numbers about your own restaurant become a yearly amount below — and a share of the budget hospitality sources recommend for annual replacement.
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Illustrative, built from your own input. The comparison with an annual replacement budget is based on widely cited US hospitality figures (see the numbers above); your own supplier prices may differ.
See the free stock control toolThis amount doesn't replace a stock count — it does make visible whether one is worth doing. At a few hundred euros a year, an annual count might be enough. At a few thousand, a fixed counting rhythm is the difference between a cost you know and a cost you only feel.
HappyChef's free stock control tool has a blank count sheet ready for exactly that — no subscription, no account, just a list to count against. See the free stock control tool.
What to do with this, this week and after
You don't need to start an expensive audit to begin. You do need a first count before you can see whether things get better or worse.
This week
- Count what you currently have in cutlery, glasses and menus — not perfectly, just an honest starting point to measure the next count against.
- Write that number down somewhere that survives, not on a scrap of paper by the till. The stock control tool's free count sheet works well for this.
- Fill in the calculator above with your own estimate, even a rough one — a rough number still beats no number at all.
Every month
- Set new cutlery and glassware purchases against your budgeted breakage percentage. Everything above that is shrinkage, not breakage — and deserves its own line.
- Ask suppliers to label replacement orders separately from initial purchases, so over time you see your own trend instead of one annual figure.
- Check whether the pattern concentrates on one type of piece — that more often points to a specific process (takeaway cups, say) than to one culprit.
Structurally
- Make counting a habit, not a suspicion. Staff who feel accused hide problems; staff who simply count along report them.
- Consider, as Nightjar did, whether the single most 'taken' item in your restaurant needs to stay a cost — a card, a set that could just as easily become a souvenir.
- Repeat the count at least twice a year on the same rhythm, so the number becomes a trend instead of a one-off scare.
The cost that never gets an invoice
Shrinkage never becomes a crisis. It's never big enough on any single day to alarm anyone, and that's exactly why it stays invisible for years on a cost sheet that otherwise looks reasonably complete.
The seven numbers above take the mystery out of it: a dozen pieces a week, a budgeting gap of a couple of percentage points, a glassware choice that halves the difference, and a yearly amount that for most restaurants sits somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand euros.
You don't have to find every last spoon. You only need to know how many didn't come back this year — and that's exactly the number the calculator above works out for you.