Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Food Service Contractor Revenue and Continuation Benchmark
Contracted food service run inside schools, hospitals, offices, stadiums and other client sites.
Average Food Service Contractor Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census counts every food service contractor with paid employees and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment below.
≈$1,690,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
30,086
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $50.9 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $50.9 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 30,086 employer establishments works out to $1,690,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Food Service Contractors (NAICS 722310). Contract food service for institutions and venues; restaurants open to the public are separate categories. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
The average here runs above the storefront restaurant averages because revenue arrives through long contracts serving captive populations rather than through walk-in trade. One signed agreement can carry a site for years, which puts contract renewal, rather than daily foot traffic, at the center of the year.
Revenue is concentrated in few clients, so losing one contract removes a large block of income at once, and pricing is usually fixed for the contract term while food costs are not.
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 food service contractors on their own: they are 30,086 of the 52,820 employer establishments in that group, about 57 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Payroll covers the staff working at client sites, not the food cost, equipment or management fees written into the contract itself.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈32% |
Payroll share of receipts, Food Service Contractors, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 32.0 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. Contract feeding is labor heavy by design, since staff follow the client's service hours rather than demand, and the payroll line tends to follow the contract schedule rather than daily 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 | $1,690,444 | $1,134,467 | 1 of 8 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 31.69% | 28.31% | 2 of 8 |
| Employer establishments | 30,086 | 35,498.5 | 5 of 8 |
Position among 8 food service categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 1st of 8 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 5th of 8 by employer establishment count and 2nd of 8 by payroll share. Payroll equals 31.69 percent of receipts here, 3.37 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food Service Contractors (this page) | $1,690,444 | 31.69% | 30,086 |
| Full-Service Restaurants | $1,466,570 | 34.42% | 254,201 |
| Limited-Service Restaurants | $1,323,036 | 26.12% | 271,243 |
| Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets | $1,238,151 | 25.32% | 4,590 |
| Caterers | $1,030,783 | 30.88% | 12,579 |
Nearest categories by average revenue, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category reports higher revenue per employer establishment than every category shown here: Full-Service Restaurants, Limited-Service Restaurants, Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets and Caterers. It contains more employer establishments than two 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.
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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 Food Service Contractors (NAICS 722310), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. For contract food service, note that restaurants open to the public and event caterers sit in separate Census categories.
Full method, sources and limits
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