Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Fast Food Restaurant Revenue and Continuation Benchmark
Counter or drive-through service where customers pay before eating, built on speed and volume.
Average Fast Food Restaurant Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
For limited-service restaurants, the 2022 Economic Census tabulates employer establishments and their total receipts; the average below is that total divided by that count.
≈$1,320,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
271,243
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $358.9 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $358.9 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 271,243 employer establishments works out to $1,320,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Limited-Service Restaurants (NAICS 722513). Category is limited-service restaurants, which also includes fast casual and counter service beyond classic fast food. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
Fast food runs on volume and throughput rather than ticket size, and the biggest chains pull the average up: a single busy franchise location can turn over far more volume than an independent counter does. Labor runs leaner than in table service, which shows in the payroll share below.
Franchise economics can sit between gross revenue and operator take: royalties, marketing funds, remodel cycles and supplier terms all live below the receipts line this page measures.
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 limited-service restaurants on their own: they are 271,243 of the 608,144 employer establishments in that group, about 45 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Counter service compresses labor into short scheduled shifts; the verified share below shows how much of each revenue dollar that still takes.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈26% |
Payroll share of receipts, Limited-Service Restaurants, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 26.0 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. Counter service runs lean crews on tight scheduling software; labor flexes with traffic hour by hour, which is why this share sits below full-service.
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 | $1,323,036 | $1,134,467 | 3 of 8 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 26.12% | 28.31% | 6 of 8 |
| Employer establishments | 271,243 | 35,498.5 | 1 of 8 |
Position among 8 food service categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 3rd of 8 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 1st of 8 by employer establishment count and 6th of 8 by payroll share. Payroll equals 26.12 percent of receipts here, 2.19 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Limited-Service Restaurants (this page) | $1,323,036 | 26.12% | 271,243 |
| Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets | $1,238,151 | 25.32% | 4,590 |
| Full-Service Restaurants | $1,466,570 | 34.42% | 254,201 |
| Caterers | $1,030,783 | 30.88% | 12,579 |
| Food Service Contractors | $1,690,444 | 31.69% | 30,086 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports lower revenue per employer establishment than Full-Service Restaurants and Food Service Contractors, and higher revenue than Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets and Caterers. 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 limited-service restaurants, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
This category counts franchised and independent locations together, and the two are financially different businesses. A franchisee pays royalties and advertising fees out of the same receipts an independent keeps, so identical sales can leave very different money behind.
Drive-through share is not broken out, and it is a major operational divide in this category. Where one exists it can carry a large share of transactions, and its absence changes both the peak capacity and the site value.
Operator lens
- Queue times shape almost every operating decision. Limited-service formats compete on how quickly a queue clears, which makes equipment layout and staffing at peak more important than menu breadth.
- The payroll share above prices the crew, though it cannot show how those hours are split. Turnover cost sits inside that number as continual training, and it is one of the few costs an operator can genuinely influence.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- What does the franchise agreement actually require? Royalties, marketing contributions, mandated refurbishment and term length decide the economics more than sales volume does.
- How old is the equipment and when is the refresh due? Brand-mandated remodels arrive on a schedule and are paid for by the operator, not the brand.
- What is the labor market like around this site? A location that cannot staff its peak hours cannot serve its peak hours, whatever the traffic count says.
- How much of the volume is drive-through or delivery? Each channel has its own margin and its own capacity ceiling, and a site optimized for one may throttle the other.
- Who controls the site? Ask whether the property is owned, leased from the brand or leased from a third party, because that determines who captures the value if the location succeeds.
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 Limited-Service Restaurants (NAICS 722513), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. Drive-through volume concentrates revenue in fewer, bigger units than the storefront count suggests.
Full method, sources and limits
Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.