Cafeteria and Buffet Restaurant Revenue Benchmark

Average Buffet Restaurant Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every cafeteria, grill buffet and buffet restaurant with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of restaurants gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$1,238,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $5.7 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 4,590 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $1,238,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets, NAICS 722514. The category covers cafeterias, grill buffets and buffets where customers serve themselves or order at a counter and pay a set price or by item. Full-service restaurants and fast food restaurants are counted in separate categories. Classified separately in group 7225: 722511 Full-Service Restaurants; 722513 Limited-Service Restaurants; 722515 Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars. Nothing outside that code is counted on this page.

Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed September 2026

Employer Establishments at Year Five Industry group

Restaurants and Other Eating Places, NAICS 7225, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.

Across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts, five-year results ranged from 54.6 to 56.6 percent. This benchmark covers Restaurants and Other Eating Places, NAICS 7225, as a whole, and this category accounts for 4,590 of the 608,144 employer establishments in it. A count by age is not a survival rate, because the figures compare two headcounts rather than follow one set of businesses.

Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data

Payroll divided by receipts, both as published for the same year.

Payroll share of receipts, Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 25.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a modest share for a restaurant category, because self-service replaces much of the front-of-house labor that a full-service restaurant pays for.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes food cost, which in a buffet is a larger and less predictable line than in a menu restaurant because customers decide how much they take.

Business Scale and Ownership Structure Official data

How large the average establishment is, and whether the population is independent operators or multi-site companies.

Scale and ownership, Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 15.7 people, and the industry counted 1.1 employer establishments per firm. A buffet needs cooks, line attendants, cashiers and cleaners across long service hours, which explains that staff count, and the establishments per firm figure shows a mix of chains operating many locations and independent single-site operators.

These are arithmetic industry averages. They state the size of the average establishment and show that multi-establishment ownership exists. They do not show the distribution of business sizes and they do not measure market concentration.

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Data Source Notice

This product uses the Census Bureau Data API but is not endorsed or certified by the Census Bureau.

Figures above are from the 2022 Economic Census reference year, released by the Census Bureau in 2024 and 2025; markets have moved since.

Questions Worth Asking BusinessNES analysis

Cafeteria and Buffet Restaurant: the volume and waste questions behind a self-service average.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• How much does the average customer eat? A fixed-price buffet earns the same from a light eater and a heavy one, so food cost per guest swings with the crowd and the menu design. That ratio, not receipts, is the number a buffet operator watches every day.
• What happens to the line at closing? Buffet food has tight time-and-temperature limits, and food exposed for self-service or held outside safe limits may need to be discarded, so overproduction can create significant waste. Forecasting traffic hour by hour is the core operating skill, and an annual average says nothing about it.
• Chain unit or independent? Chain buffets and cafeterias with central purchasing and standardized menus share this category with independent ethnic buffets and local cafeterias. Their scale, rent and purchasing terms differ, and the average sits somewhere between them.
• Which daypart carries the week? Weekend brunch, weekday lunch trade near offices and family dinners each favor different locations and menus. A buffet that depends on one daypart is exposed in a way that a revenue total cannot show.
• What does the space cost per seat? Buffets need large dining rooms, long serving lines and big kitchens, so they carry more square footage per dollar of sales than most restaurants. Rent and utilities on that footprint are fixed costs invisible in a receipts figure.
• How exposed is the model to health rules? Self-service food handling draws close attention from health inspectors, and rules on sneeze guards, temperature logs and utensil changes vary by jurisdiction. Compliance costs and closure risk sit outside the benchmark entirely.