How Profitable Can a Restaurant Be?
Gross margins vary by business model, but on average most restaurants see margins above 50%. In that light, when you spend ¥10 on a bowl of rice out, more than half goes straight to the owner as profit (assuming you don’t count the time you’d spend cooking yourself—it’s normal to save roughly half your food-delivery bills by cooking at home).
Haidilao posts a 56% gross margin, Ajisen Ramen 73%, Ji Mao Jiu 63%, and Country Basis 58%. Even Yang Guofu Spicy Hot Pot, one of the lower-margin concepts, still sits at 30.2%, while Lao Xiang Ji has averaged around 20% in recent years. Once you strip out the marketing costs tied to expansion and listings and optimize staffing, its adjusted margin would likely clear 45%.
Put simply: a single store pulling 100 orders a day at ¥10 each can generate roughly ¥15,000 in monthly gross profit.