How much is a restaurant worth in Australia?
No Australian government or industry body publishes verified restaurant sale multiples, so a single confident number is not available from anyone honestly. Observed asking prices give a picture instead: across 209 restaurants advertised with a firm price on seekbusiness.com.au on 2 September 2026, the median was $169,000 in Australian dollars, a quarter were under $100,000 and 14% were above $500,000. A restaurant's value is normalised earnings times a multiple a buyer will accept, and the ATO's published restaurant benchmarks are the best free way to test whether your earnings figure is realistic before you multiply it.
By the bizflip team · Published 2 September 2026 · Facts checked 2 September 2026 · Sources listed below
A restaurant is worth the earnings a buyer believes will still be there after you hand over the keys, discounted for the risk that they will not be. There is no register of completed restaurant sales in Australia and no official multiple to look up, so this guide sets out what can actually be verified — published ATO benchmarks and observed asking prices — and the method for turning them into a number for your own restaurant.
Why there is no official restaurant multiple
Private business sale prices are not published in Australia. The ATO, ASIC and the ABS do not release transaction multiples for hospitality, and there is no equivalent of property sales data. Every "restaurants sell for X times earnings" figure circulating online traces back to a broker or valuer describing their own completed deals — a real but unaudited sample, usually without a stated size or period.
That does not make those ranges useless. It makes them a rough orientation rather than a price. Our guide to valuation multiples by industry sets out the reported Australian hospitality range and names the adviser it came from, so you can weigh it yourself. What it cannot do is tell you what your restaurant is worth, because restaurants differ far more than the label suggests: a 40-seat suburban BYO run by an owner-chef and a 150-seat licensed venue with a salaried head chef and a function room are not the same asset class.
What is observable: asking prices
On 2 September 2026 we collected the first 44 pages of the "Coffee, Cafes & Restaurants" category on seekbusiness.com.au, which held 3,875 live Australian listings that day. That gave 821 unique listings, 659 of them existing businesses rather than new franchise-store opportunities. Excluding the 75 advertised price-on-application and 12 showing only a band, and classifying the rest from the listing title and summary, 209 restaurants carried a firm advertised price.
| Measure | Advertised asking price (AUD) |
|---|---|
| Lowest in sample | $20,000 |
| 25th percentile | $100,000 |
| Median | $169,000 |
| 75th percentile | $337,500 |
| Highest in sample | $2,300,000 |
By band, 24% were advertised under $100,000, 34% between $100,000 and $200,000, 14% between $200,000 and $300,000, 13% between $300,000 and $500,000, 10% between $500,000 and $1 million and 4% above $1 million. About one in seven was advertised "plus SAV" — stock at valuation — meaning the buyer pays the headline figure and then pays again for the food, beverage and cellar stock counted on settlement day.
Read all of this as what sellers are asking, not what buyers paid. We have no visibility of settled prices, of how long each business had been listed, or of how many of these listings will sell at all. A concentration of asking prices under $200,000 tells you a great deal about how small most restaurant businesses are and very little about where negotiations land.
Start with earnings, not turnover
Restaurant turnover is a poor guide to value because the cost base is heavy and largely fixed. Two restaurants doing $1.2 million a year can produce completely different earnings depending on rent, roster and menu costing. What a buyer prices is normalised earnings — EBITDA for a venue run by paid management, or seller's discretionary earnings where the owner works in the business and the buyer intends to replace them. The two figures are not interchangeable, and applying a multiple built for one to the other is a common and expensive mistake; we set out the difference in SDE versus EBITDA.
Normalising means removing one-off costs, adding back genuinely private expenses, and putting a real market wage against every unpaid family shift. In owner-chef restaurants this last adjustment is often the difference between an attractive business and a marginal one, because the head chef's wage is the single largest line a buyer has to fund if the chef is you and you are leaving.
Test your numbers against the ATO restaurant benchmarks
The ATO publishes performance benchmarks for restaurants built from tax returns, most recently for the 2023–24 financial year and updated in March 2026. They do not produce a valuation. They tell you whether the profit figure you are about to multiply is plausible for a restaurant of your size.
| Annual turnover | $65,000 – $500,000 | $500,001 – $2,000,000 | More than $2,000,000 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost of sales / turnover | 32% – 39% | 32% – 38% | 31% – 36% |
| Average cost of sales | 35% | 35% | 34% |
| Total expenses / turnover | 79% – 89% | 84% – 93% | 88% – 94% |
| Average total expenses | 84% | 88% | 91% |
| Labour / turnover | 18% – 30% | 23% – 32% | 27% – 34% |
| Rent / turnover | 11% – 17% | 8% – 12% | 6% – 9% |
One pattern in that table is worth sitting with, because it changes how you should think about growth. As restaurants get bigger, rent falls as a share of turnover — from 11–17% down to 6–9% — but labour rises, from 18–30% up to 27–34%, and average total expenses climb from 84% to 91%. Scale in a restaurant buys rent efficiency and pays for it in wages. A buyer looking at a larger venue is not automatically looking at a proportionally larger profit, and a seller arguing that turnover growth alone justifies a higher price is arguing against the published data.
A caution on reading a margin straight off the total expenses row: the benchmarks pool sole traders, partnerships, trusts and companies, so whether an owner's own wage sits inside "total expenses" varies from return to return. Treat the residual as an indication of where the money goes, not as a ready-made earnings figure.
What moves a restaurant's value up or down
- The lease, before anything else. Term remaining, options, permitted use, rent review mechanism and whether the landlord will consent to an assignment. A profitable restaurant with eighteen months left and no option is selling a wasting asset.
- Chef and owner dependence. If the reputation, the menu and the kitchen discipline all live in one person who is leaving, the buyer is pricing the risk that the food changes. A documented menu, costed recipes and a second competent chef materially reduce that risk.
- The liquor licence, where there is one. A licence attached to the premises is real value a buyer would otherwise have to apply for, and its transfer is a separate regulatory process from the sale itself — in New South Wales, through Liquor & Gaming NSW.
- Kitchen infrastructure. Exhaust canopy, grease trap, gas supply, cool room and three-phase power are expensive to install and effectively impossible to add cheaply. A kitchen already fitted for the buyer's concept is worth more than one that is not.
- Fitout is worth less than it cost you. A heavily themed fitout only has value to a buyer continuing that concept. To anyone else it is a demolition cost.
- Delivery platform revenue. Turnover arriving through third-party delivery apps carries commission, is easy for a competitor to take, and is generally valued more cautiously than dine-in trade. Show the split.
- Whether the roster complies. Restaurant employees are covered by the Restaurant Industry Award 2020, which includes penalty rates, overtime and allowances. Underpaid or undocumented shifts are both a legal exposure and an earnings overstatement, and they surface in due diligence.
What the buyer is actually buying
Most restaurant sales are asset sales: fitout and equipment, goodwill, the assignment of the lease, the trading name, supplier and staff arrangements, and stock priced separately at valuation. The premises themselves are rarely included. A share sale — where the buyer purchases the company that owns the business — happens less often for small venues and carries a different risk and tax profile for both sides, which is a decision to make with your accountant and solicitor rather than from a guide.
Two tax questions shape the net figure you keep. A sale can be GST-free as the supply of a going concern, but only where the sale is for payment, the buyer is registered or required to be registered for GST, both parties agree in writing that it is a going concern, and everything necessary for continued operation is supplied. Separately, whether you qualify for the small business capital gains tax concessions depends on your own circumstances. Both need your accountant, not a general guide.
Getting to a number you can defend
Benchmarks narrow the range; asking prices show you the market's shape; neither produces the figure you take into a negotiation. For that, have an accountant, a business broker or a registered valuer normalise your earnings and apply a multiple to your actual lease, actual roster and actual dependence on you. Our guide on what a business is worth covers the underlying methods, and how to sell a business in Australia sets out the process that follows once you have a price.
Sources
Every load-bearing claim in this guide, and where it comes from:
- ATO small business benchmarks for restaurants, 2023–24 financial year: cost of sales 31%–39% of turnover, total expenses 79%–94%, labour 18%–34% and rent 6%–17% depending on the turnover band; average total expenses rise from 84% to 91% as turnover increases. Last updated 16 March 2026. — Australian Taxation Office
- The ATO publishes small business benchmarks drawn from tax return data across more than 100 industries, updated annually, for owners to compare their own performance. — Australian Taxation Office
- Observed asking prices: the "Coffee, Cafes & Restaurants" category held 3,875 live Australian listings on 2 September 2026. From the first 44 result pages we collected 821 unique listings, 659 of them existing businesses for sale; 209 restaurants carried a firm advertised price, with a median of $169,000, a 25th percentile of $100,000 and a 75th percentile of $337,500. — seekbusiness.com.au (sample collected 2 September 2026)
- The Restaurant Industry Award 2020 covers employers in the restaurant industry throughout Australia, defined at clause 4.2 as restaurants, reception centres, night clubs, cafes and roadhouses. — Fair Work Ombudsman
- A sale of a going concern is GST-free where the sale is for payment, the purchaser is registered or required to be registered for GST, and the parties have agreed in writing that the sale is of a going concern; the sale must include everything necessary for the continued operation of the business. — Australian Taxation Office
- A liquor licence can be transferred when a business is sold; Liquor & Gaming NSW usually gives provisional approval so the venue can keep trading, with confirmation of the transfer typically within 60 days. — Liquor & Gaming NSW
- Standard business valuation methods include market comparison, net asset valuation, return on investment, replacement cost and capitalising future profit. — business.gov.au (Australian Government)
Ready for your own number? The valuation calculator is free and ungated, and its methodology is public.