Business Data & Benchmarks · United States
Full-Service Restaurant Revenue and Continuation Benchmark
Sit-down dining with table service, where meals are ordered from a menu and paid after eating.
Average Full-Service Restaurant Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census
The 2022 Economic Census publishes the count of full-service restaurants with paid employees and their combined annual receipts. Dividing one by the other gives the average below.
≈$1,470,000 /year
Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment
254,201
Employer establishments in the United States, 2022
as published $372.8 billion
Combined annual gross revenue of employer establishments, 2022
How this is calculated: about $372.8 billion in combined annual revenue divided by 254,201 employer establishments works out to $1,470,000. This is an average per establishment, and averages get pulled up by large, busy operations, so a typical business may sit below it.
Scope: Full-Service Restaurants (NAICS 722511). Full-service restaurants only; limited-service restaurants are a separate category. Employer establishments only: owner-operated businesses with no paid employees are not in these figures.
Full-service restaurants sit near the top of the food service revenue range because table service adds courses, drinks, and higher tickets per visit. The average hides a wide spread: a neighborhood bistro and a high volume steakhouse are both in this category.
Watch the tail risks unique to dining rooms: lease terms tied to build outs, kitchen equipment replacement cycles, and reservation no-show rates that quietly erode covers per service.
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 full-service restaurants on their own: they are 254,201 of the 608,144 employer establishments in that group, about 42 percent of it. How this is measured
Payroll as a Share of Revenue Official data
Dining rooms carry service staff on top of the kitchen, and the verified payroll share below reflects both sides of the house.
| Cost line | Share of receipts |
|---|---|
| Annual payroll share of receipts, United States | ≈34% |
Payroll share of receipts, Full-Service Restaurants, United States, 2022 Economic Census.
Approximately 34.0 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. Annual payroll here includes reported tips along with wages, salaries, commissions and bonuses, so declared front of house pay sits inside this line; compensation that never reaches a payroll record sits outside the census payroll measure.
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 | $1,466,570 | $1,134,467 | 2 of 8 |
| Payroll share of receipts | 34.42% | 28.31% | 1 of 8 |
| Employer establishments | 254,201 | 35,498.5 | 2 of 8 |
Position among 8 food service categories, 2022 Economic Census, employer establishments only.
This category ranks 2nd of 8 by average annual revenue per employer establishment. It ranks 2nd of 8 by employer establishment count and 1st of 8 by payroll share. Payroll equals 34.42 percent of receipts here, 6.11 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-Service Restaurants (this page) | $1,466,570 | 34.42% | 254,201 |
| Limited-Service Restaurants | $1,323,036 | 26.12% | 271,243 |
| Food Service Contractors | $1,690,444 | 31.69% | 30,086 |
| 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 lower revenue per employer establishment than Food Service Contractors, and higher revenue than Limited-Service Restaurants, Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets and Caterers. It contains more employer establishments than three 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 full-service restaurants, and what to look at instead.
What the numbers do not show
Receipts cannot separate the two halves of a full-service restaurant. Kitchen output and beverage service run on different margins, different staffing and different hours, and a room that sells wine well can carry a kitchen that barely breaks even.
The figure also hides occupancy. Rent as a share of sales is a line often blamed when a restaurant closes, and it can vary more across one city than between states.
Operator lens
- Covers per shift matter more than the menu price. A room that turns tables twice on a Friday earns from the same square footage as one that turns them once, with almost the same fixed cost behind it.
- The payroll share above understates true labor cost. It excludes benefits, employer taxes and any contracted cleaning or delivery labor, all of which land in the same weekly budget as wages.
Questions to ask before starting or buying
- How long is the lease and what does it cost? Ask for rent as a percentage of sales and the renewal terms. A restaurant with a short lease on a good corner is a different asset from the same room with a decade left.
- What is the condition of the hood and the line? Ventilation, refrigeration and grease systems are expensive to replace and are usually the reason a kitchen closes for unplanned weeks.
- Who is in the kitchen and are they staying? Ask how long the chef and sous chef have been there. In an independent restaurant, recipes tend to leave with the cooks who hold them.
- What share of sales comes from delivery platforms? Platform orders arrive with commission attached and without the customer relationship, so two restaurants with identical sales can keep very different amounts.
- Are the licenses transferable? Liquor and outdoor seating permissions often carry local conditions that do not automatically follow a change of ownership.
Models worth considering
- Sell the quiet hours Most independent rooms earn in a handful of shifts. Private hire, cooking classes or a lunch trade aimed at a nearby employer use capacity that is already being paid for.
- Build a second revenue line off the kitchen Retail sauces, prepared meals or a small wholesale account use the same equipment and staff during prep hours rather than service hours.
- Own the reservation relationship Guests who book directly can be reached again. Guests who arrive through a platform belong to the platform.
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 Full-Service Restaurants (NAICS 722511), employer establishments only. The scope note near the top of the page explains what that includes and excludes for this business type. For table service, remember the average mixes independents with chain steakhouses; the middle of the pack sits well under the mean.
Full method, sources and limits
Spotted an error? Corrections are logged and published. Business data and benchmarks by BusinessNES.