Retail Bakery Revenue Benchmark

Average Retail Bakery Revenue per Year 2022 Economic Census

The 2022 Economic Census counts every retail bakery with paid employees, meaning shops that bake on the premises and sell mainly to walk-in customers, and publishes their combined annual receipts. Dividing that total by the number of bakeries gives the average annual revenue per employer establishment shown below.

≈$813,000 /year

Average annual gross revenue per employer establishment

How this is calculated: about $6.1 billion in combined annual receipts divided by 7,524 employer establishments works out to an average annual revenue of $813,000 per employer establishment.

Scope: Retail Bakeries, NAICS 311811. The category covers bakeries that bake and sell bread, cakes and pastries on the premises, mainly to walk-in customers. Commercial bakeries that supply stores and restaurants, and shops that only resell baked goods, are counted in separate categories. Classified separately in group 3118: 311812 Commercial 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 7,524 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, Retail Bakeries, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

Approximately 34.0 percent of every revenue dollar goes to annual payroll, a substantial share because a bakery makes what it sells: bakers, decorators and counter staff turn flour and sugar into products by hand every morning.

Payroll here excludes benefits, employer taxes and owner compensation, and it excludes ingredients, packaging and the energy behind the ovens, so the real cost of a loaf sits well above the payroll share alone.

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, Retail Bakeries, United States, 2022 Economic Census.

The average establishment employed about 10.3 people, and the industry counted 1.1 employer establishments per firm. A bakery of that size employs a production crew that starts before dawn and a counter team that follows, and the establishments per firm figure shows a trade of single shops with very few chains.

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

Retail Bakery: how production hours and waste hide inside a shop's revenue.

Before you rely on this benchmark

• How much of the batch goes unsold? Fresh bread and pastries have a shelf life of hours, so what is left at closing time is discounted, donated or thrown away. The share of production that becomes waste is one of the central numbers in the trade, and receipts do not show it.
• Which products carry the counter? Custom cakes and wedding orders bring large tickets and deposits, bread brings daily traffic on slim margins, and coffee adds sales at little cost. The product mix behind a given revenue figure ranges from a bread bakery to a cake studio.
• Are there wholesale accounts? Supplying cafes, restaurants and grocers adds volume and predictable orders, but at wholesale prices and with delivery costs, and it can push a shop toward commercial bakery economics. Both kinds of sales land in the same receipts total.
• What do ingredients cost this year? Flour, butter, eggs and sugar move with commodity markets and can change a bakery's cost base within a season, while retail prices adjust more slowly. A revenue benchmark from a single year cannot capture that squeeze.
• Who works the early shift? Skilled bakers who start in the small hours are hard to find and retain, and a shop that loses one can lose its product quality overnight. Labor availability shapes a bakery's ceiling more than its floor space does.
• Does the shop own its equipment? Ovens, mixers, proofers and refrigeration represent a large upfront investment and a steady maintenance cost, and a secondhand deck oven and a new rack oven produce different capacity for the same rent. Capital per shop is invisible in this benchmark.