Seattle, Washington · Operating plan
A measured citywide restaurant profit-margin average for Seattle is unavailable. Calculate your own margin before payroll and overhead, and operating margin, using monthly sales and costs.
By HustleFin · Page reviewed · Regional observations: 2023. The review date does not change the observation year.
Enter your own restaurant assumptions in one currency. These are your planning numbers, not measured city costs or city averages. Use the same month for every amount and count each cost once.
Enter every amount, including zero where a cost does not apply, then calculate. Your amounts stay in this browser.
Use your actual address, business model and quote dates in Seattle. Confirm requirements with the responsible local authority and provider before entering a cost; the county observations below do not supply lease, tax, permit or equipment prices.
Geographic scope: King County. King County includes Seattle, Bellevue and other communities; this is a county-wide reference, not Seattle city limits.
Category: Restaurants and Other Eating Places (NAICS 7225; source code 7225//). Employer establishments include chain locations and exclude nonemployer businesses. An establishment is a business location, not a count of companies or owners.
Across the listed county geography, the source reports 5,403 employer establishments. This total describes the selected counties and category; it is not a count limited to independent businesses within the city boundary.
| County | FIPS | Employer establishments | Employment: week of March 12 | Annual payroll ($1,000) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| King County | 53033 | 5,403 | 84,390 (flag: G) | 2,916,038 (flag: G) |
Unavailable cells retain the source disclosure flag instead of becoming zero. Employment is the reference-week measure; annual payroll covers the calendar year. Do not interpret payroll divided by employment as an hourly wage or annual worker salary.
Select cbp23co.txt rows with county FIPS 53033 and raw NAICS 7225//; retain published est, emp, ap and noise flags. Sum est only across the listed, disjoint counties; do not sum industry parent and child rows. Annual payroll ap is in thousands of dollars; emp refers to the week of March 12.
Includes restaurant/eating-place employer locations, including chains; excludes drinking places and special food services outside NAICS 7225. Covers establishments with paid employees; nonemployer/sole-operator businesses without payroll are excluded. Chains are not filtered out. Published employment and payroll use disclosure protection; retain source flags. CBP provides no revenue, profit margins, commercial rents, startup budgets or prevailing hourly wages.
County Business Patterns does not contain profit margins, revenue, commercial rent, opening costs or permit fees. Regional observations provide industry context; planner outputs come solely from your inputs.
Census source release · Download the Census raw source ZIP · Retrieved: 2026-10-09
Source SHA-256: e9539e96ceb91608ad44ab1cfc651d7c1ff9b88bddfe7a8ff64134ccde6e9603
Margin before payroll and overhead = (revenue − direct costs excluding payroll) ÷ revenue × 100. Operating profit = revenue − direct costs − payroll − occupancy − other operating costs. Operating margin = operating profit ÷ revenue × 100. All payroll is separate from direct costs in this planner. The first subtotal is not accounting gross margin when your accounts include direct labor in cost of sales.
Illustrative inputs only — not observations about Seattle. Monthly revenue of $50,000, direct costs of $15,000, payroll of $12,000, occupancy of $5,000 and other operating costs of $8,000 produce a 70% margin before payroll and overhead and $10,000 operating profit, or 20% operating margin. These arbitrary inputs demonstrate the formulas and are not city benchmarks.
A measured citywide profit-margin average is unavailable from this source. County Business Patterns contains employer counts, employment and payroll, but no revenue or profit. Use your own sales and costs to calculate your margin.
No. This planner subtracts direct costs, payroll, occupancy and other operating costs from revenue. Income tax and financing costs are excluded, so the result is operating margin under the stated input convention.
These measures cover different periods: employment is a March reference-week snapshot and payroll covers the calendar year. The page does not derive hourly wages or annual pay per worker from them.
Download the published county observations, source fields, geography and extraction method. Your personal planner inputs are exported separately from its result. CC BY 4.0 applies to the HustleFin compilation; underlying Census material retains its original status.
Coverage: King County. King County includes Seattle, Bellevue and other communities; this is a county-wide reference, not Seattle city limits. Includes restaurant/eating-place employer locations, including chains; excludes drinking places and special food services outside NAICS 7225. Covers establishments with paid employees; nonemployer/sole-operator businesses without payroll are excluded. Chains are not filtered out. Published employment and payroll use disclosure protection; retain source flags. CBP provides no revenue, profit margins, commercial rents, startup budgets or prevailing hourly wages.
HustleFin (2026). Seattle Restaurant: 2023 County Industry Reference. Retrieved from https://hustlefin.com/benchmarks/restaurant/city/seattle/
These observations include employer establishments and chain locations in the listed counties. They do not measure city profit averages, prevailing rent or startup spending.
Compare the geography and industry definition before comparing county measures. Each planner uses your own inputs.