NACE 56.110

Margins and profitability in restaurant activities

5,272 Norwegian companies in this industry. The median operating margin was 2.1 %, meaning what was left of revenue once every cost had been paid.

38 % 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 6,290,312NOK 8,032,179
Operating profitNOK 108,243NOK 927,239
Revenue per employeeNOK 573,320NOK 703,854

Revenue per employee is calculated on the 4,291 of 5,272 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 -11.7 %, and one tenth above 14.6 %. That is the real spread in the industry, not an average.

Top against weakest third

Top third
10.8 %
Weakest third
-6.6 %
Spread
17 percentage points
Equity ratio
12.1 %median of 5,257

Size

Profitability by size

Profitability by size
RevenueCompaniesMedian operating margin
1 to 5 m2,0980.2 %
5 to 20 m2,5752.7 %
20 to 100 m5556.5 %
over 100 m443.9 %

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
Oslo1,137
Bergen222
Trondheim221
Stavanger153
Kristiansand S119
Tromsø85

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

Public contracts

Who in the industry wins public contracts

7 of 5,272 companies in the industry have won at least one public contract since 2022, that is 0.1 %.

Only 7 companies in the industry have won a public contract since 2022. That is too few for us to say how large they are compared with the rest.

Who puts them out to tender

The 9 contracts we find come most often from these buyers.

Who puts them out to tender
Avinor AS6
Kolumbus AS1
Universitetet i Stavanger1
Medietilsynet1

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 restaurant activities

What is a normal operating margin in restaurant activities?
The median operating margin was 2.1 %, meaning what was left of revenue once every cost had been paid. Half of the 5,272 companies in the sample were above it, and half below.
What separates the best from the weakest in restaurant activities?
The top third had an operating margin of 10.8 %, against -6.6 % for the weakest. The spread is 17 percentage points, within the same industry, the same country and the same year.
How many companies are there in restaurant activities in Norway?
We hold filed accounts for 5,272 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 Restaurant activities generate per employee?
The median company in Restaurant activities turns over NOK 573,000 per employee. The figure is calculated on the 4,291 of 5,272 companies that report an employee count.
How many are loss-making in restaurant activities?
38 % of the companies in the sample posted a negative operating result.
How large is a typical company in restaurant activities?
Median revenue is NOK 6.3m. Half of the companies fall between NOK 3.4m and NOK 11.4m.
How much do public contracts matter in restaurant 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. 5,272 companies registered on industry code 56.110 (Restaurant 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.

5,272 companies · Brønnøysund Register Centre · Open tenders in this industry