How much do restaurant owners make? Find your own number

The figure on the salary sites isn't your number. Those sites count paychecks, and they mix in the wages of managers who run restaurants for someone else. An owner's pay is what is left after every cost, plus any wage the owner pays themselves through payroll. You can work out yours from last month's numbers in about 10 minutes, and this post shows how, with one example restaurant at three levels of sales.

If you want to know what share of sales a typical restaurant keeps, start with our post on the average restaurant profit margin. This one turns that share into the money that reaches you.

Why the salary-site number isn't yours

A salary figure answers “what does this job pay?” An owner's question is different: what did the business leave me after it paid everyone else? Two public sources show why the first can't answer the second.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes what hired managers earn. Its Occupational Outlook Handbook page on food service managers puts their median pay at $69,390 a year, or $33.36 an hour, in May 2025. In food services and drinking places the median was $65,060. The lowest 10% earned less than $45,960 and the highest 10% more than $107,640. The same page counts 31% of food service managers as self-employed, and says its pay figures leave the self-employed out, because the survey behind them doesn't collect their pay. So many owners who manage their own place, the self-employed ones, aren't in that figure at all.

The National Restaurant Association publishes what restaurants keep. In its August 20, 2025 article on its operations survey of more than 900 restaurants, the median income before taxes in 2024 was 2.8% of sales for full-service restaurants and 4.0% for limited-service ones. Its October 16, 2025 article on sales volume gives 4.3% for full-service restaurants with sales of $2 million a year or more and 1.1% for those below. The Association says the figures are not meant as standards or goals, and the articles don't say how each restaurant counted its owner's pay. A restaurant that pays its owner a salary and one that doesn't can report very different margins on the same month.

What owners' own tax returns show

The closest public record of what restaurant owners keep comes from the IRS itself. Its Statistics of Income division publishes nonfarm sole proprietorship statistics: business receipts, deductions and net income reported on Schedule C of Form 1040, the form a sole proprietor files. A sole proprietor can't deduct a salary for themselves, so the net income on that form is the owner's pay before their own income tax and self-employment tax. The table for tax year 2023, published in March 2026, has a row for restaurants (full and limited service) and drinking places.

Read it with care, for four reasons:

• About 58% of these returns showed net income. The other 276,837 showed none or a loss, which is why the average across all of them is so low.
• They are mostly small. Average receipts of about $118,000 a year are under $10,000 a month. A sit-down restaurant with $75,000 a month in sales is far bigger than the average return here.
• Only Schedule C. A restaurant run as a partnership or a corporation files a different return and isn't in this table.
• Tax profit isn't cash. Net income is worked out by tax rules, which can differ from the money an owner could take out in the same year.

So the table tells you that many small restaurant owners keep little, and some lose money. It can't tell you what you keep. Only your own month can.

Your number in about 10 minutes

You need last month's sales report, your bank statement or bills for the month, and your payroll report. A typical month works best; if your months swing, average the last three.

1. 01Write down last month's net sales from your sales report.
2. 02Add up every cost of running the restaurant that month: food and drink, staff pay with the employer's payroll taxes, rent and utilities, card fees, supplies, insurance, repairs, software, marketing, accounting and loan payments. Divide yearly bills by 12.
3. 03If you are on payroll yourself, leave your own wage out of that total, but keep the employer's taxes on it in.
4. 04Subtract the costs from net sales. That is what the restaurant left you this month. Add any wage you paid yourself. The total is your pay before your own taxes.
5. 05Divide it by the hours you worked that month. That is what each of your hours earned.

Step 5 answers “is this worth it?” Compare your hourly figure with what you would pay a manager to work your hours. The BLS median above is one public yardstick, and a hired manager would also cost you the employer's taxes on that wage, which our post on what an hour of labor costs lists.

This is a cash view, as the profitability test explains: a loan payment counts in full here, while your P&L counts only its interest. Both are right for their own question. This one answers “what could I take out?”

One restaurant at three levels of sales

Here is an example, made up so you can follow the sums. Birch Lane Kitchen, an example full-service neighborhood restaurant, is a sole proprietorship. The owner works 55 hours a week and isn't on payroll. Some costs rise with every sale: food and drink at 32% of sales, hourly staff with payroll taxes at 28%, and card fees, supplies and packaging at 6%. The rest are bills that stay the same each month. All the rates and bills are round numbers for the example, not benchmarks.

The same restaurant, run the same way, leaves its owner three very different years. At $50,000 a month the owner puts in $3,500 a month instead of taking anything out. At $75,000 the owner keeps $60,000 a year, about $21 for each hour worked. That $60,000 is less than the $65,060 median for a hired manager in food services and drinking places, for a job the BLS says is usually full time, and it leaves nothing for the money and risk the owner carries. At $100,000 the owner keeps $162,000: the manager-level wage, plus $96,940 that is the business's return to its owner.

That is the shape of owner pay. The monthly bills are paid first, from the first dollars of the month, and the owner is paid last, from what is left. Below break-even the owner pays in. Above it, every extra dollar of sales leaves 34 cents, so owner pay climbs much faster than sales.

One honest limit: the example lets hourly pay move exactly with sales. Real staffing doesn't, because a slow night still needs a minimum crew, so a $50,000 month usually costs more in labor than this table shows. Food and labor together, called prime cost, run from 71% of sales at $50,000 to 65.5% at $100,000 here. The prime cost guide gives the ceiling for each type of restaurant, and it is the first place to look when what's left is thin.

Draw or salary: what the IRS says

How you take money out depends on how the business is set up for tax. This is what the IRS pages say, not advice on which setup or how much pay is right for you. That is a question for your accountant.

• Sole proprietors. The IRS's Tax Guide for Small Business (Publication 334) says you can't deduct your own salary or personal withdrawals, and that as a sole proprietor you are not an employee of the business. It describes a drawing account as a separate account for the business income you take out for personal and family costs. It puts the self-employment tax rate at 15.3% of net earnings (12.4% Social Security, 2.9% Medicare), and says you generally make estimated tax payments if you expect to owe $1,000 or more, self-employment tax included. With no paycheck, nothing is withheld, so the tax money has to come out of what you take.
• Partners and corporation officers. The IRS page on paying yourself says partners are not employees and should not get a Form W-2 for what the partnership pays them, distributions included, and that a corporation's officer is generally an employee whose wages should generally match their duties.
• LLCs. The IRS's LLC page says it treats an LLC as a corporation, a partnership or part of its owner's return, depending on its elections and number of members. By default, two or more members make a partnership, and one member is disregarded as separate from the owner.
• S corporations. The IRS's S corporation compensation page says “S corporations must pay reasonable compensation to a shareholder-employee in return for services” before any non-wage distributions are made. It names no dollar amount. Among the factors it lists are training and experience, duties, time and effort spent on the business, and what comparable businesses pay for similar services.

For the method above, the setup changes only one line. A sole proprietor or partner has no wage of their own on payroll, so everything left is their pay. An S corporation owner on payroll adds that wage back to what's left. Either way, the total is the same question: what did the restaurant pay you, all in?

This week

1. 01Pull last month's net sales, every bill paid that month (loan payments in full, yearly bills ÷ 12) and your payroll report.
2. 02Work out what was left after every cost except your own wage, and add any wage you paid yourself. That is your pay for the month.
3. 03Write down the hours you worked last month, from your schedule or your best honest count, and divide. That is what an hour of yours earned.
4. 04Compare it with the BLS manager figure, $65,060 a year in food services and drinking places, and see whether your restaurant pays you at least what you'd pay someone to do your job.
5. 05Put the same month into the break-even calculator with your own pay in its box, to see the sales a month needs to pay you.
6. 06Ask your accountant how your business is set up for tax, how you should be taking money out, and how much to set aside for your own taxes.