Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Catering Business Revenue and Continuation Benchmark
Food prepared and served for events, from office lunches to weddings, off site or on location.
Average Catering Business Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census breaks out caterers as a distinct category, publishing the employer establishment count and combined receipts that produce the average below.
≈$1,030,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
12,579
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $13 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $13 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 12,579 employer establishments works out to $1,030,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Caterers (NAICS 722320). Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
Catering revenue books in events, not walk-ins: quotes, deposits and headcounts set much of the year before the year happens, and the census average flattens that calendar into a single number.
Deposits, minimums and cancellation terms shape catering cash flow between the booking and the event date; annual receipts totals show none of that timing, so read the average as scale, not liquidity. Tastings, equipment rental and staffing fees are invoiced alongside food, and the census figure does not separate them.
Source US Census Bureau, 2022 Economic Census, Summary Statistics (ECNBASIC): ESTAB, RCPTOT and PAYANN by NAICS · Vintage 2022 Economic Census · Calculation BusinessNES · Accessed July 2026
Where these figures come from
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.
Employer Establishments at Year Five Varies by cohort
Special food services, NAICS 7223, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
46.8%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
Results across the 2014 to 2018 cohorts ranged from 37.8 to 58.8 percent, so treat this as a directional benchmark rather than a precise forecast. This benchmark covers Special food services, NAICS 7223, as a whole. It is not a survival rate for caterers on their own: they are 12,579 of the 52,820 employer establishments in that group, about 24 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Catering staffs up around bookings and stands down between them; the verified share below averages that pulse across the year.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈31% |
Payroll share of receipts, Caterers, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 31.0 percent of every revenue dollar in this category goes to annual payroll. As the census defines it, payroll includes wages, salaries, reported tips, commissions and bonuses; it excludes employer-paid benefits, employer payroll taxes, contractor payments and owner compensation. Treat it as one verified anchor, not a full labor cost breakdown. Event crews are surge labor: a caterer staffs Saturdays like a restaurant and Tuesdays like an office, so annual payroll hides violent weekly swings. Event crews are hired against a booking calendar, so headcount rises and falls week by week in a way an annual payroll figure cannot show.
This is not total labor cost or profit margin.
How to read this number
Position Within Its Comparison Group Computed from official data
Where this category sits among 8 food service categories in the same 2022 Economic Census release. Ranks and the group median are computed on exact values, before the rounding used above.
| Measure | This category | Group median | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per employer establishment | $1,030,783 | $1,134,467 | 5 of 8 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 30.88% | 28.31% | 3 of 8 |
| Employer establishments | 12,579 | 35,498.5 | 6 of 8 |
Position among 8 food service categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 5th of 8 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 6th of 8 by employer establishment count and 3rd of 8 by payroll share. Payroll equals 30.88 percent of receipts here, 2.57 percentage points above the group median of 28.31 percent. A higher or lower position is not a measure of profit or of business quality: the census reports receipts and payroll only.
Compared With Similar Business Types Computed from official data
The 4 categories closest to this one by average revenue inside the same comparison group.
| Census category | Revenue per establishment | Payroll share | Establishments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Caterers (this page) | $1,030,783 | 30.88% | 12,579 |
| Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets | $1,238,151 | 25.32% | 4,590 |
| Drinking Places (Alcoholic Beverages) | $822,601 | 29.38% | 40,911 |
| Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars | $803,603 | 27.25% | 78,110 |
| Limited-Service Restaurants | $1,323,036 | 26.12% | 271,243 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets and Limited-Service Restaurants, and higher revenue than Drinking Places (Alcoholic Beverages) and Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars. It contains more employer establishments than one of the four categories shown. Every figure in this table comes from the same 2022 Economic Census release and the same employer establishment population, so the columns are directly comparable.
Beyond the Benchmark BusinessNES analysis
What the census figures leave out about caterers, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
Catering revenue is booked long before it is earned, and the census figure cannot show the calendar behind it. A caterer with a full spring and an empty autumn reports the same annual total as one with even trade, while running a very different cash position.
Food, labor and rental income arrive blended in one number. Staffing, equipment hire and delivery are invoiced alongside the menu, so the receipts overstate how much of this business is cooking.
Operator lens
- Deposits fund purchasing before an event happens. Client deposits fund purchasing for the event, which is why a caterer can grow quickly and still run out of money if terms slip.
- Repeat corporate accounts renew with far less effort than one-off events take to win. One annual event is a sale; a company that orders monthly is a business, and the second is far harder to lose to a lower quote.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- What is on the forward calendar and is it deposited? Ask for booked events with dates and deposits received, not for inquiries.
- Where is the production kitchen and on what terms? Many caterers rent shared or off-premise space, and that agreement may not survive a sale.
- How is event staff sourced? Casual crews are the difference between a smooth service and a reputational problem, and the good ones are booked by relationship.
- What equipment travels and who owns it? Chafing gear, refrigeration and transport are capital items that are easy to overlook in a valuation.
- What proportion of work is corporate versus social? The two have different lead times, different margins and different sensitivity to a downturn.
Explore More on BusinessNES
More BusinessNES guides and rankings, plus neighboring benchmark pages built from the same verified data.
Sources and Methodology
Every figure on this page is bound to a published source, and each figure's own source line names that source precisely: the 2022 Economic Census for counts, receipts and payroll, and the Census Bureau's Business Dynamics Statistics for the industry continuation benchmark. Where a page shows a sector survival curve instead, that series comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
BusinessNES performs the arithmetic on those published figures and nothing else. Receipts are divided by establishments, and payroll by receipts. The age-five establishment count is divided by the age-zero establishment count for the same four-digit industry group, then repeated across five age-zero cohorts to give a reference and a range. This category's share of its industry group, along with the ranks, medians and nearest peers in the comparison sections, comes from the same published tables. Every one of them is recomputed from the sealed source files at each release and blocks publication if it does not match. Results are rounded and marked approximate. The reference year is 2022 for revenue and payroll; treat every figure as a baseline, not today's market.
Category scope matters: these figures cover Caterers (NAICS 722320), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Off-premise work means facility costs differ sharply from restaurants despite similar kitchens. Tastings, rentals and staffing fees blur the food versus service split in receipts.
Full method, sources and limits
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