Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Coffee Shop Revenue Benchmark (Category Proxy)
Espresso drinks, brewed coffee and light food served over the counter, from kiosks to full cafes.
Average Coffee Shop Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census lists employer establishments and combined receipts for the snack and nonalcoholic beverage bar category. The average below divides those receipts by that count.
≈$800,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
78,110
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $62.8 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $62.8 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 78,110 employer establishments works out to $800,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars (NAICS 722515). Category covers snack and nonalcoholic beverage bars, including juice bars, donut shops, and ice cream parlors, not only coffee shops. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
This is the widest category on this page: the class also contains juice bars, ice cream parlors, donut shops and bubble tea counters. Treat the average as a signal for the counter service beverage and snack segment rather than a precise coffee shop figure.
The structural question for a beverage counter is daypart coverage: how much of the day earns while rent runs around the clock. A receipts total says nothing about opening hours or peak concentration.
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 Industry group
Restaurants and Other Eating Places, NAICS 7225, the 2018 starting count compared with the count of five-year-old establishments in 2023.
56.6%the year-five count as a share of the starting count
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. It is not a survival rate for snack and nonalcoholic beverage bars on their own: they are 78,110 of the 608,144 employer establishments in that group, about 13 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Espresso work is labor at the counter; the verified share below prices it for the whole category.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈27% |
Payroll share of receipts, Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 27.0 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. Espresso bars trade ticket size for speed; baristas per shift stay small, but slow afternoons mean paid hours without matching sales.
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 | $803,603 | $1,134,467 | 7 of 8 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 27.25% | 28.31% | 5 of 8 |
| Employer establishments | 78,110 | 35,498.5 | 3 of 8 |
Position among 8 food service categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 7th of 8 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 3rd of 8 by employer establishment count and 5th of 8 by payroll share. Payroll equals 27.25 percent of receipts here, 1.06 percentage points below 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars (this page) | $803,603 | 27.25% | 78,110 |
| Drinking Places (Alcoholic Beverages) | $822,601 | 29.38% | 40,911 |
| Caterers | $1,030,783 | 30.88% | 12,579 |
| Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets | $1,238,151 | 25.32% | 4,590 |
| Mobile Food Services | $297,317 | 23.35% | 10,155 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Drinking Places (Alcoholic Beverages), Caterers and Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets, and higher revenue than Mobile Food Services. It contains more employer establishments than all four of them. 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 snack and nonalcoholic beverage bars, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
Nearly all of a cafe's revenue arrives in a few hours, and the census figure smooths that away. A shop that is full from seven to ten and empty after lunch has the same annual receipts as one with steady all-day traffic, and a completely different staffing problem.
The figure also cannot separate drinks from food. Pastry and sandwiches carry waste risk that coffee does not, and a kitchen changes both the licensing and the labor a site needs.
Operator lens
- The morning rush shapes most of the operating decisions. Equipment, layout and staffing should be designed around the busiest ninety minutes, because capacity lost there is not recoverable later in the day.
- Wholesale beans and retail cups are different trades. Roasting or supplying other venues uses the same brand but different economics, and mixing them without separate numbers hides which one is working.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- What does the hourly sales curve look like? Ask for sales by hour across a normal week. The shape tells you more about the business than the annual total does.
- Who owns the espresso equipment? Machines are sometimes supplied by a roaster under a bean purchase agreement, which ties the shop to a supplier and a price.
- What is the seating and dwell time policy? Long stays with one purchase use the asset without paying for it, and the fix is layout and pricing rather than signage.
- Is there a kitchen and what does it permit? Food preparation changes the inspection regime, the ventilation requirement and the staffing skill needed.
- How dependent is the site on one employer or campus? Cafes near a single large office or school inherit that building's calendar, including its holidays.
Models worth considering
- Sell beans to the customers who already trust the cup Retail bags and subscriptions extend the relationship beyond the visit and use inventory the shop already buys.
- Fill the afternoon with a different job Study space, meetings or a small food menu use hours that are already staffed and already leased.
- Supply the offices that cannot make it themselves Small wholesale accounts with nearby workplaces convert a quiet midmorning into scheduled production.
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 Snack and Nonalcoholic Beverage Bars (NAICS 722515), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Remember the category width here: donut shops and juice bars sit in the same official pool as espresso focused cafes.
Full method, sources and limits
Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.