Chris Koerner watches a packed restaurant and does the math: one customer every 30 seconds, $18 average ticket, 13 hours a day. He estimates $8M to $10M in annual revenue and $2.5M in profit, showing that restaurants with the right formula can make serious money.
Chris Koerner
March 15, 2025
One person every 30 seconds
$18
$36 per minute; over $2,000 per hour
Look at this freaking thing right here. Whoever told you that restaurants are bad business did not know what they're talking about. I'm kind of a sicko. So I just calculated how much this restaurant makes per year, and it's pretty shocking. Let me crunch the numbers for you. Look how long this line is. I sat and watched the entrance of the door right there, and I counted how many seconds it took for people to walk in. And on average, one person walks in that door every 30 seconds. Average ticket price is $18. That means these guys are making $36aminute, which is over $2,000 an hour. They're open 13 hours a day, 365 days a year. In case you're counting. That's over $10 million top line revenue a year for a freaking restaurant serving chicken and fries. It's not like they're the only guys doing that now. Are they this busy all day, every day? Probably not, but I've been here multiple times and there's always a line. So let's just say conservatively, it's 8 million bucks. What's the rent here? Well, I looked it up right here. $45 a square foot. This is about 3,200 square feet, which means these guys are paying 10 to $14,000 a month for rent. So can restaurants be a bad business? Yes. But really, what's bad? Your food or your customer service? If you can nail all three of those, these things will print millions of dollars a year for generations to come. This one location makes about two and a half million dollars a year in net profit. Get all my business ideas right here.
