Get our free one-page cheat sheet of pizzeria cost benchmarks: food, labor, rent and delivery, with a blank for your own numbers.
The line every new pizzeria owner hears is that 90% of restaurants fail in the first year. It isn’t true. Of the accommodation and food service businesses that opened in the year to March 2021, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counts 86.6% still open a year later, 76.4% after two years and 68.5% after three. Ohio State’s H.G. Parsa, who studied restaurant failure in Columbus, called the 90% figure a myth that’s harmful to the industry.
So most shops survive. The question that matters is what the first three years look like while you’re in them: how sales move, when you can expect a profit, and what tends to close the ones that don’t make it.
How many make it to year three
The BLS numbers cover every establishment with employees in the sector, from hotels to pizzerias, so they’re a ceiling more than a pizza benchmark. Pre-pandemic cohorts did a little worse. Of businesses opened in the years to March 2010 through 2013, 63.1% to 65.6% were still open three years later. After five years, it was a little over half.
Restaurant-only studies land in the same range. A BLS economist and a Berkeley statistician, working from employer records in eight western states from 1992 to 2011, found that only 17% of independent full-service restaurant startups failed in their first year, and the median restaurant lasted about 4.5 years. Parsa’s Columbus, Ohio data from 1996 to 1999 found 26% failing in year one, 19% in year two and 14% in year three, 59% in all. His study counted any change of ownership as a failure, so a shop that was sold counts the same as one that closed.
Pizza may do better still. Datassential, a restaurant data firm, reported that only two of more than 1,000 newly opened pizzerias closed within their first 12 months in 2025, per PMQ. That figure comes from a partial year and a vendor that didn’t publish its method. Treat it as a good sign, not a forecast.
Opening month is the worst month to plan from
New restaurants usually open busy and then fall back. BJ’s Restaurants, a full-service chain, tells investors that new locations commonly open with sales well above their sustainable run-rate. It says it can take up to three years for sales to settle, and a year or longer to reach the profit it targets. The Cheesecake Factory says traffic generally settles into its normal pattern within three to six months. Those are full-service chains with marketing budgets, but every opening gets the same curiosity traffic. Schedule to opening month and you’ll be overstaffed by month four.
Pizza chains don’t publish their first-year curve. Their franchise disclosures leave new stores out. Marco’s 2024 figures exclude the 66 stores that weren’t open all 52 weeks and average $934,318 in sales for the 955 that were. So the sales number a franchise pitch shows you is for a store that has already made it through year one.
Opening month tells you how curious the neighborhood is. Month four tells you what business you’re actually in.
Profit takes longer than survival
Staying open and making money aren’t the same thing. Domino’s told shareholders in 2018 that its stores’ global average cash-on-cash payback on a new store was less than three years, and that’s one of the best-run systems in the business, with its buying power behind it. At Toppers, the bottom third of franchised stores in 2023 averaged $4,239 in net operating income on $803,334 in sales, and the median store in that group lost money. Those were established stores, not first-year ones.
When shops do close, it’s rarely because of something outside. In Parsa’s interviews, failed owners named being undercapitalized or having poor financial management among their top reasons, and only one blamed location. His later work in Denver found that once restaurants had five to 10 critical health violations, they were very likely to fail. In other words, the shops that close usually have the warning signs in their own books and inspection reports first.
Free cheat sheet: 15 pizzeria cost benchmarks on one page
Prime cost, labor, delivery and rent, each with its source and a blank for your shop’s number. Enter your email and the download opens right away.
You’ll also get the Oven Scars newsletter. We never sell or share your address.
The limitation: no public dataset tracks an independent pizzeria’s sales by year of operation. We looked. The BLS doesn’t publish survival for pizzerias or even for restaurants alone. The chain disclosures that show the opening bump are from full-service brands, and pizza franchisors leave first-year stores out of their numbers. The best year-one benchmark is your own week-by-week sales. If you’re still planning, start with what it costs to open a pizza shop and build your cushion from your monthly costs, then read what owners actually take home once it settles.
