How Much Toilet Roll Does a Restaurant Use? Estimating by Covers
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Most restaurant operators order washroom paper reactively. Someone notices the cupboard is nearly empty, and an order goes in. That works until a busy weekend catches you short, or until you realise you have been paying retail prices for something you get through by the pallet. Here is how to estimate properly.
Covers, not headcount
Office consumption models are built on headcount, because the same people use the washroom repeatedly across a day. Restaurants are different: high volumes of people, each visiting once or occasionally twice. So the driver is covers served, not staff numbers.
As a working baseline for UK sites, plan on roughly 25 to 40 percent of covers resulting in a washroom visit. Pubs and bars sit at the top of that range or above it, because drink led venues generate far more visits per customer. Quick service and takeaway heavy sites sit well below it.
A worked example
Take a 90 cover restaurant serving 1,800 covers a month.
- At 30 percent, that is roughly 540 washroom visits per month from customers.
- Add staff use. Ten staff working full shifts add meaningfully, often another 200 to 300 visits monthly.
- Call it 800 visits per month total.
A 200m mini jumbo roll delivers a large number of uses but real consumption is always higher than the theoretical figure, because of over pulling, waste and partial rolls discarded on changeover. Build in 30 percent wastage on top of any calculation. In practice a site at this level typically gets through one to two mini jumbo rolls per cubicle per month.
Do not forget the back of house paper
This is where restaurant estimates usually go wrong. Toilet roll is the visible line, but the kitchen paper spend is often larger. A busy kitchen can get through a 150m blue roll in days.
When you build the monthly order, split it into three:
- Washroom tissue for customer and staff cubicles.
- White roll for food contact and prep, per colour coding practice.
- Blue roll for cleaning, floors and back of house.
Sites that only budget for the first one consistently overspend, because the other two get bought in a panic at cash and carry prices.
Choosing the right washroom format
For restaurant washrooms, the decision is usually between mini jumbo and jumbo. Mini jumbo at 150m or 200m suits most sites: it fits compact cubicles, and the capacity is enough that refills are a scheduled task rather than a service time emergency.
Full jumbo at 300m or 400m makes sense in high traffic pubs, stadium adjacent venues and anywhere with genuinely heavy footfall, where the labour of refilling during service is the real cost. Our jumbo versus mini jumbo sizing guide covers the trade off, and our core size guide makes sure whatever you pick fits your dispensers.
Seasonality
Restaurant paper consumption is not flat. December can run 40 to 60 percent above a quiet month in a Christmas trading venue, and coastal and tourist sites swing harder. If you order the same quantity every month you will either run short in peak or tie up cash in stock through the quiet period.
Track covers monthly for one year, and set your order against covers rather than against the calendar. It takes a spreadsheet column and removes most of the guesswork permanently.
When pallet buying starts to pay
A single site restaurant is usually big enough to justify buying by the pallet once back of house paper is included in the total. Multi site groups almost always are. The saving comes from cutting out the wholesaler margin and from tier pricing that improves with volume, as set out in our pallet buying guide.
We manufacture in Leicester and supply UK hospitality direct. Send your cover numbers and cubicle count through our wholesale quote form and we will build a monthly specification against them.