Australian food and beverage businesses turned over A$134.1 billion in 2024-25 and kept A$8.9 billion of operating profit before tax, which Skai Solutions reads as 6.6 cents in every sales dollar, on ABS figures released on 18 September 2026.
That is the whole industry, measured by the Australian Bureau of Statistics rather than estimated by a software vendor. It is also the first release to cover the year to June 2025, so it is the newest official answer available to the question. Below is what the figures say about revenue, what they say about profit, how to place your own venue inside them, and the three places the average will mislead you if you read it as a target.
The ABS publishes food and beverage services as a subdivision of its own, which is the closest official match to what most people mean by "restaurants": cafes, restaurants, takeaway food services and catering, but not hotels or motels. The Australian Industry release for 2024-25, published 18 September 2026, gives the following for that subdivision.
| Food and beverage services, Australia | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|
| Sales and service income | A$127.9bn | A$134.1bn |
| Total expenses | A$120.8bn | A$126.6bn |
| Operating profit before tax | A$8.5bn | A$8.9bn |
| Total labour costs | A$38.5bn | A$40.8bn |
| Purchases of goods and materials | A$43.8bn | A$47.5bn |
| People employed at end of June | 1,072,600 | 1,100,500 |
Sales grew 4.8% on the year. There is no official figure for revenue per restaurant, because the ABS does not publish business counts below industry division, and this page will not invent one. What it does publish is a count for the whole accommodation and food services division: 112,871 businesses trading at 30 June 2025. Against that division's A$160.4 billion of sales, the average is about A$1.42 million a year per business. Treat that as a ceiling rather than a typical venue, because it carries hotel groups and national chains alongside a forty seat suburban cafe.
A$8.917 billion of operating profit before tax on A$134.077 billion of sales. That is 6.65%, and the arithmetic is ours on two published ABS figures. The year before it was 6.63%, so the margin did not move even though sales rose 4.8% and profit rose 5.2%.
Six and a half cents is thin, and it is thin across a whole industry rather than in one badly run venue. It is also why a single recurring cost of a few hundred dollars a month is worth arguing about, and why the same cost is easy to justify if it brings sales with it. Our page on restaurant profit margin in Australia sets out the tax-return view of the same question, which reaches a similar place from different data.
The two lines that matter are the two you control, and the ABS gives both.
| Share of sales | 2023-24 | 2024-25 |
|---|---|---|
| Purchases of goods and materials | 34.2% | 35.4% |
| Total labour costs | 30.1% | 30.4% |
| Both together | 64.3% | 65.9% |
Both halves went up, and together they took 1.6 more points of sales than the year before. That is the industry-wide version of the squeeze operators describe: revenue grew faster than inflation, and stock and wages grew faster again. The ABS notes wages and salaries across the division rose 5.3%, with the growth linked to the minimum wage increase. Our pages on restaurant food cost percentage and restaurant labour cost percentage take each half on its own, and restaurant prime cost reads them together against the ATO's tax-return benchmarks.
Do it on sales excluding GST, because the ABS figures are, and comparing a GST-inclusive sales number to GST-exclusive benchmarks flatters you by about nine percent of the ratio.
A venue does A$850,000 in sales excluding GST across a full year. Stock movement gives A$301,000 of goods. Total labour, on-costs included, is A$264,000.
The arithmetic is Skai Solutions' own and the shares are the ABS's. Your accountant and your own accounts are the only authority on your own venue.
The same inputs divide a second way, into a daily count rather than an annual total. We have worked that through on our page on how many customers a cafe gets a day, including why the answer it produces is a floor.
A revenue figure is a customer count multiplied by a spend. If you want to sanity check the first half of that, our page on how many customers a cafe gets a day sets out what the published counts actually support.
Three ways, and all three matter more than the number itself.
Not at this level of detail, and borrowing the Australian figures would be wrong. The closest published New Zealand numbers are from the Restaurant Association of New Zealand, whose Q1 2025 Sales Snapshot put hospitality sales at NZ$4 billion for the quarter with restaurants and cafes NZ$1.99 billion of that, and whose 2025 Hospitality Report puts wage costs at about 40% of hospitality revenue. That last figure is a different definition across a wider set of businesses, so it is not comparable to the ABS's 30.4%. Stats NZ Business Demography Statistics counted 9,858 cafes and restaurants in New Zealand at February 2025. Our page on hospitality wages in New Zealand covers the pay side.
One thing, and it is on the revenue side rather than the cost side. At an industry margin of 6.65 cents in the dollar, cutting costs is slow work: you would need to find A$15 of savings to match A$1 of profit from a sale you already had available. A booking that was going to happen anyway, taken rather than missed, arrives with no extra stock and no extra labour hour, so it lands much closer to the margin than a new customer won by advertising does.
Be honest about the size of it. If your phone mostly carries enquiries, directions and opening hours, a basic message-taking plan is the right buy and it is not us. Where an AI receptionist earns its keep is a venue whose phone carries bookings and orders during service, when nobody is free to pick it up. Our page on the cheapest way to answer a restaurant phone prices every option side by side, including the ones that cost nothing.
Revenue is the top line; the per customer figure underneath it is average spend per head, which this guide works out from the ABS and Stats NZ releases rather than from an estimate.
Across the whole food and beverage services subdivision, A$134.1 billion of sales and A$8.9 billion of operating profit before tax in 2024-25, on ABS Australian Industry figures released 18 September 2026. That is 6.65 cents of profit in every sales dollar. The ABS does not publish revenue per business below division level, so there is no official per-restaurant figure.
There is no published Australian benchmark for a single venue, and anyone quoting one is estimating. What is published is the shape of the costs: goods at 35.4% of sales and labour at 30.4% in 2024-25. A venue holding those two shares at any revenue level is running in line with the industry, and a venue whose revenue is high but whose shares are worse is not.
As an industry, narrowly. Operating profit before tax was 6.65% of sales in 2024-25 and 6.63% the year before, so the margin held while sales grew 4.8%. Individually the picture is harsher: CreditorWatch measured a 10.4% twelve month closure rate for food and beverage services in February 2026, the highest of any industry.
About A$121,800 a year. That is A$134.077 billion of sales divided by the 1,100,500 people employed in food and beverage services at the end of June 2025, both ABS figures, and the division is ours. The year before it was about A$119,200, so productivity measured this way improved about 2.2%.
Flat on margin, worse on cost structure. Operating profit before tax rose 5.2% and sales rose 4.8%, so the margin was steady. But goods went from 34.2% to 35.4% of sales and labour from 30.1% to 30.4%, so the two controllable lines together took 1.6 more points than the year before.
ABS Australian Industry, reference period 2024-25, released 18 September 2026, subdivision 45 food and beverage services. The business count is ABS Counts of Australian Businesses, released 18 August 2026. Every percentage on this page is arithmetic on those published figures and is labelled as ours rather than as an ABS statistic.