--- title: "Closing Monday Saves Labor. It Doesn't Save Rent. Run the Four-Week Test First." description: "Seven percent of operators in Restaurant365's midyear survey have closed on days they'd normally open. A slow day can lose money on paper and still cover part of your rent. One subtraction tells you which kind of day you have, and four weeks of sales tell you whether its customers come back on Tuesday." canonical_url: https://ovenscars.com/articles/closing-a-day-a-week/ author: "Oven Scars Editorial" publisher: "Oven Scars" section: "Operations" date_published: 2026-10-31T00:00:00.000Z tags: ["labor", "scheduling", "margin", "hours"] word_count: 1109 reading_time_minutes: 9 license: "CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 — cite as \"Oven Scars\" and link the canonical URL" --- # Closing Monday Saves Labor. It Doesn't Save Rent. Run the Four-Week Test First. *Seven percent of operators in Restaurant365's midyear survey have closed on days they'd normally open. A slow day can lose money on paper and still cover part of your rent. One subtraction tells you which kind of day you have, and four weeks of sales tell you whether its customers come back on Tuesday.* **Operator takeaway:** Pull eight weeks of sales by day. For your slowest day, multiply its sales by one minus your food, paper and card-fee percentage, then subtract that day's loaded hourly labor. If the result is negative in six of the eight weeks, close that day for four weeks, avoiding holiday weeks. Keep it closed only if the week's total contribution went up compared with the same weeks last year. Halloween was the busiest day of 2025 across the independent pizzerias on Slice's platform, with [190,340 orders, and every one of the year's 25 busiest days was a Friday](https://slice.com/blog/top-pizza-ordering-days/). Pizza demand piles into a few days. The crew, the lights and the rent don't. That's why a growing number of operators are taking a day off the calendar: in Restaurant365's midyear survey, [17% said they had limited their operating hours and 7% had closed on days they would normally be open](https://www.pmq.com/survey-restaurants-still-getting-crushed-by-rising-costs-and-more-pain-may-lie-ahead/). Closing a day can be the right call. But most shops make it on a gut read of a quiet Monday, and the gut misses which costs actually stop when you lock the door. ## Rent doesn't take Mondays off Close one day a week and you save the costs that only exist when you're open: that day's hourly labor, the prep you'd have thrown out, some of the gas and power. You don't save rent, insurance, loan payments, software subscriptions or a salaried manager. Those bills arrive whether the door is open six days or seven. So the question isn't whether Monday is profitable on a fully loaded P&L. Almost no slow day is. The question is whether Monday covers its own costs and leaves something toward the bills that never stop. That takes one subtraction: the day's sales, minus food and paper, minus card fees, minus that day's labor. Here's a hypothetical California shop, open 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. with two people on. At the state's new [$17.40 minimum wage from Jan. 1](https://dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2026/2026-66.html), loaded with the roughly 11% that BLS data puts on top of wages for [legally required benefits ($1.91 an hour on $17.25 in wages in leisure and hospitality)](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ecec_09092026.htm), each labor hour costs about $19.33. Twenty labor hours is about $387 for the day. Toast puts a pizzeria's cost of goods at about [20% of revenue](https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/how-much-do-pizza-shops-make), and card processing at [2.5% to 3.5% of each transaction](https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/what-is-a-merchant-fee). Take 20% plus the 3% midpoint, and that Monday needs about $502 in sales just to pay for itself. If boxes and waste push your food and paper to 30%, the floor rises to about $577. Use your own percentages. Ours are only there to show the math. - **Limited operating hours:** [17% of operators; 7% closed on days they'd normally open; 64% running below full capacity](https://www.pmq.com/survey-restaurants-still-getting-crushed-by-rising-costs-and-more-pain-may-lie-ahead/) (R365 midyear survey of 420+ operators, via PMQ) - **Top pizza days of 2025:** [all 25 were Fridays; Halloween led with 190,340 orders](https://slice.com/blog/top-pizza-ordering-days/) (Slice) - **California minimum, Jan. 1, 2027:** [$17.40 an hour](https://dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2026/2026-66.html) (California DIR) - **Leisure and hospitality, June 2026:** [$17.25 wages, $1.91 legally required benefits per hour](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ecec_09092026.htm) (BLS) - **Cost of goods:** [about 20% of pizzeria revenue](https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/how-much-do-pizza-shops-make); **card fees:** [2.5–3.5% per transaction](https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/what-is-a-merchant-fee) (Toast) - **Replacing one hourly employee:** [an estimated $2,700 to $5,864](https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.mediapost.com/uploads/R365-Guide-State-of-the-Restaurant-Industry-2026-Midyear-Insights.pdf) (R365 midyear report) ## Below the floor, the day costs you to open. Above it, closing gives away rent money Run two Mondays through the same shop. At $400 in sales, the day keeps $308 after food, paper and fees and pays $387 in labor. It loses about $79 a week, or roughly $4,100 a year. Close it and that money stays in the drawer. At $800, the day keeps $616 and pays the same $387. That leaves about $229 a week, or roughly $11,900 a year, going toward rent and the loan. Close that day and the $229 doesn't go away. Your other six days have to cover it, unless Monday's customers simply order on Tuesday instead. A slow day doesn't have to make money. It has to pay for its own crew and leave something for the rent. Close a day that does, and your other six days pick up the bill. ## Nobody publishes how many Monday customers come back on Tuesday That last question decides everything, and we couldn't find a published answer for pizzerias. If most of your Monday regulars just move their order a day, closing saves the labor and keeps most of the sales. If they find another shop, you lose the sales and maybe the customer. Your own register is the only place that answer lives. There's also a third option between staying open and closing: give the day a reason. Pizza Today profiled Uncle G's Pizza in Birmingham, Ala., where owner George Gilliam [built a special for each slow day](/articles/pizza-specials-that-make-money/). A whole-pie deal took Wednesdays [from under $1,000 to $2,500–$3,000](https://pizzatoday.com/news/doubling-to-tripling-a-restaurants-slow-day-sales/149599/). He also told the magazine Mondays "remain challenging." Some days can be rebuilt. Some can't. The crew side counts too, though nobody has priced it. Recruiting and training staff topped [operators' list of biggest challenges for the rest of 2026, picked by 30.1%](https://www.pmq.com/survey-restaurants-still-getting-crushed-by-rising-costs-and-more-pain-may-lie-ahead/). A guaranteed day off for the whole team won't show up on the P&L. Neither does the cost of [a cook who quits from burnout](/articles/how-many-employees-does-a-pizza-shop-need/). If closing a day keeps even one person, R365's replacement estimate says it's worth thousands. That's a judgment call, not a benchmark. ## The four-week test Pull eight weeks of sales by day, the same report you'd use to [schedule to your sales curve](/articles/schedule-to-the-curve/). Work out the floor for your slowest day with your own wages and percentages. The [labor-by-daypart calculator](/pizzeria-playbook/labor-by-daypart/) does the hourly version. If the day falls short of its floor in most weeks, and [trimming its hours](/articles/where-the-labor-line-breaks/) hasn't fixed it, test the closure. Announce it two weeks ahead on the door, your ordering site, every delivery app and your [Google profile hours](/articles/your-google-profile-is-your-real-storefront/). Then close for four straight weeks, avoiding Thanksgiving and December holiday weeks, which skew everything. Track three numbers: total weekly sales, sales on the days either side of the closed one, and labor dollars. Compare them against the same four weeks last year, not just the month before. Pull eight weeks of sales by day. For your slowest day, multiply its sales by one minus your food, paper and card-fee percentage, then subtract that day's loaded hourly labor. If the result is negative in six of the eight weeks, close that day for four weeks, avoiding holiday weeks. Keep it closed only if the week's total contribution went up compared with the same weeks last year. The limitation: four weeks shows you whether sales moved to other days. It can't show you the customer who tried you on a Monday, found you closed and never tried again. The model also leaves out utilities, because nobody publishes a pizzeria's daily energy cost. Energy Star says restaurants use [five to seven times more energy per square foot than other commercial buildings](https://www.energystar.gov/buildings/resources-audience/small-biz/restaurants), so if your oven stays cold on the closed day, that's a saving this math doesn't count. Read your gas bill for the test month before you decide. ## Sources cited - https://slice.com/blog/top-pizza-ordering-days/ - https://www.pmq.com/survey-restaurants-still-getting-crushed-by-rising-costs-and-more-pain-may-lie-ahead/ - https://dir.ca.gov/DIRNews/2026/2026-66.html - https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ecec_09092026.htm - https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/how-much-do-pizza-shops-make - https://pos.toasttab.com/blog/on-the-line/what-is-a-merchant-fee - https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.mediapost.com/uploads/R365-Guide-State-of-the-Restaurant-Industry-2026-Midyear-Insights.pdf - https://pizzatoday.com/news/doubling-to-tripling-a-restaurants-slow-day-sales/149599/ - https://www.energystar.gov/buildings/resources-audience/small-biz/restaurants --- Published by [Oven Scars](https://ovenscars.com/), news and ideas for pizzeria owners. Editorial standards: https://ovenscars.com/editorial-standards/.