NACE 56.300

Margins and profitability in beverage serving activities

367 Norwegian companies in this industry. The median operating margin was 2.6 %, meaning what was left of revenue once every cost had been paid.

37 % of the companies in this industry posted a negative operating result that year.

In kroner

Revenue and operating profit

Revenue and operating profit
Median companyTop third
RevenueNOK 6,140,334NOK 9,339,961
Operating profitNOK 118,214NOK 1,241,412
Revenue per employeeNOK 451,697NOK 552,266

Revenue per employee is calculated on the 337 of 367 companies that report an employee count, as the median of the ratio within each company.

Median, not mean. A mean would be pulled up by the largest companies in the industry, and would say little about a typical one.

The distribution

What companies in the industry earned

One tenth of companies fell below -10.1 %, and one tenth above 18.9 %. That is the real spread in the industry, not an average.

Top against weakest third

Top third
13.4 %
Weakest third
-5.3 %
Spread
19 percentage points
Equity ratio
15.9 %median of 367

Size

Profitability by size

Profitability by size
RevenueCompaniesMedian operating margin
1 to 5 m1510.4 %
5 to 20 m1814.4 %
20 to 100 m348.5 %

Companies are split into revenue bands, with the median margin in each. Bands with fewer than ten companies are omitted, because the median becomes too unstable to show.

Geography

Where the companies are based

Where the companies are based
Oslo76
Stavanger22
Bergen18
Kristiansand S17
Trondheim16
Sandnes13

The six postal towns with the most companies in this industry, by registered business address.

Public contracts

Who in the industry wins public contracts

We find no public contracts awarded to companies in beverage serving activities since 2022. Public procurement appears to play little or no role in this industry.

Contracts come from Doffin and TED. Our collection is not complete, and TED covers only contracts above the EEA threshold, so the figures are a floor and not a full count. We say what we find, not what exists.

Questions and answers

Common questions about beverage serving activities

What is a normal operating margin in beverage serving activities?
The median operating margin was 2.6 %, meaning what was left of revenue once every cost had been paid. Half of the 367 companies in the sample were above it, and half below.
What separates the best from the weakest in beverage serving activities?
The top third had an operating margin of 13.4 %, against -5.3 % for the weakest. The spread is 19 percentage points, within the same industry, the same country and the same year.
How many companies are there in beverage serving activities in Norway?
We hold filed accounts for 367 Norwegian companies on this industry code with at least one million kroner in revenue. The real number is higher, since dormant and very small companies are excluded.
How much revenue does a company in Beverage serving activities generate per employee?
The median company in Beverage serving activities turns over NOK 452,000 per employee. The figure is calculated on the 337 of 367 companies that report an employee count.
How many are loss-making in beverage serving activities?
37 % of the companies in the sample posted a negative operating result.
How large is a typical company in beverage serving activities?
Median revenue is NOK 6.1m. Half of the companies fall between NOK 3.4m and NOK 11.2m.
How much do public contracts matter in beverage serving activities?
We find almost no public contracts in this industry since 2022, so public procurement appears to play little role here.

Next

Related industries

Other industries in the same group

Method. 367 companies registered on industry code 56.300 (Beverage serving activities) with filed accounts and at least one million kroner in revenue. The figures come from the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and are public. Operating margin is operating profit divided by operating revenue.

All figures are from the 2025 accounts as filed with the Brønnøysund Register Centre. The year comes from the accounting period, not from the filing date, so every company appears with the year its figures actually cover.

We show one cross-section and no trend line. Our database has broad coverage for 2024 and 2025, but only a small and non-random sample for the years before. A curve over a longer period would therefore measure who we happened to collect, not what happened in the industry.

Companies with under one million in revenue are excluded, because dormant limited companies would otherwise pull the median down. We do not publish an industry page until we hold at least 30 companies.

This is a description of an industry, not a ranking of companies. We name no individual company here.

367 companies · Brønnøysund Register Centre · Open tenders in this industry