Commercial Bakery Revenue Benchmark

Average Commercial Bakery Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every commercial bakery with paid employees, meaning plants producing fresh and frozen bread and other bakery products mostly for sale through stores, restaurants and distributors, and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of bakeries gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$13,079,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $38.2 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 2,918 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $13,079,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Commercial Bakeries, NAICS 311812. The category covers commercial bakeries making fresh and frozen bread and other fresh bakery products, mostly for sale to stores, restaurants and distributors. Retail bakeries baking for walk-in customers are counted separately. Classified separately in group 3118: 311811 Retail Bakeries; 311813 Frozen Cakes, Pies, and Other Pastries Manufacturing; 311821 Cookie and Cracker Manufacturing, and 2 further codes. 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 Smaller cohort

Bakeries and Tortilla Manufacturing, NAICS 3118, 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 55.3 to 64.6 percent. This benchmark covers Bakeries and Tortilla Manufacturing, NAICS 3118, as a whole, and this category accounts for 2,918 of the 11,979 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, Commercial Bakeries, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 16.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a small share for a food producer because automated lines and a workforce of that size turn out volumes far beyond what a retail bakery bakes by hand.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes flour, ingredients, packaging, delivery trucks and the trade discounts that grocery chains receive, which together carry most of the cost of a loaf.

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, Commercial Bakeries, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 40.0 people, and the industry averaged 1.1 employer establishments per firm, which confirms that multi-establishment ownership exists in the published population without showing how establishments are distributed across firms. As an illustration, that headcount could cover production shifts, packing and a delivery fleet.

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

Commercial Bakery: what production lines, routes and grocery contracts do to a bakery's average.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• Who are the customers? A bakery supplying a few grocery chains under contract has predictable volume and thin margins, while one serving restaurants and independent stores has more accounts and more route work. Customer concentration decides how exposed a plant is to a single lost account.
• How efficient are the lines? Bakery economics turn on throughput per hour, changeover time between products and waste from rejected batches. Two plants with the same receipts can differ widely in what they keep depending on how their lines run.
• What do ingredients cost this year? Flour, sugar, butter and eggs move with commodity markets while contracted prices to customers adjust slowly, and that gap can widen or close between one census and the next.
• How far do the routes go? Fresh bread is delivered daily, so a bakery's reach stops where an overnight truck run ends, and route density decides the cost of each stop. Frozen products travel farther but need freezer investment. Distribution shapes the business as much as baking does.
• Fresh or frozen? Fresh bakeries live on daily deliveries and short shelf life, while frozen dough and par-baked products ship nationally and carry different equipment, energy and packaging costs. This category counts fresh and frozen producers together.
• What does the plant cost to keep? Ovens, mixers, proofers, packaging lines and food safety certification represent large fixed costs that run whether volume is high or low. Capital per plant is a defining number invisible in a receipts total.