How many bakeries and sweet shops are in Saudi Arabia?
Bakeries, pastry and chocolate shops.
48.4K
active registrations list bakeries & sweet shops activities — 3.4% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
48,408 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list bakeries & sweet shops activities as of 16 September 2026 — 3.4% of all classified registrations, the 23rd-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
9,532 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +4.7% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (13,400), Jeddah (6,664), Makkah (3,796) lead. Relative to its size, Rafha is the most concentrated: bakeries and sweet shops make up 1.6× the share they hold nationally.
37% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 100,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 48,408
- 3.4% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 9,532
- +4.7% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 37%
- 17,905 of 48,408
- Median company capital
- SAR 100k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where bakeries and sweet shops are registered
Column height: bakeries and sweet shops by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh13,4000.9×
- Jeddah6,6641.3×
- Makkah3,7961.6×
- Madinah2,9621.6×
- Dammam1,8880.9×
- Buraydah1,4451.2×
- Taif1,1931.1×
- Tabuk9161.2×
- Khamis Mushait8811.0×
- Khobar8790.8×
Concentration compares the sector's share of a city's registrations with its share nationally; 1.0× is average. Highlighted cities are above 1.15×.
Bakeries & sweet shops: registrations by year of creation
Still-active registrations by the year they were created, 2015–2025. Older years read lower because cancelled registrations drop out.
Most common activities
Registrations listing each national activity code
- Retail of bakery products and confectionery18,496Activity code 472161
- Retail of chocolate and cocoa14,540Activity code 472162
- Traditional local bread baking4,008Activity code 107110
- Sweets preparation2,825Activity code 107182
- Bread and bread products from automated bakeries2,248Activity code 107120
- Traditional and oriental sweets manufacturing1,995Activity code 107181
- Traditional flatbreads and raw pastry sheets1,193Activity code 107160
- Gateaux, petits fours and cakes manufacturing1,123Activity code 107140
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- Sole proprietorship30,49163%
- LLC17,07935.3%
- JSC7021.5%
- SJSC620.1%
- General partnership360.1%
- Limited partnership260.1%
- GCC branch8<0.1%
- Foreign branch4<0.1%
Common questions
How many bakeries and sweet shops are there in Saudi Arabia?
48,408 active commercial registrations list bakeries & sweet shops activities as of 16 September 2026, according to Ministry of Commerce data. A registration can list several activities, so it may also count in related sectors.
Which city has the most bakeries and sweet shops?
Riyadh, with 13,400 — 27.7% of the national total. Jeddah follows with 6,664.
Is the number of bakeries and sweet shops growing?
9,532 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +4.7% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in bakeries & sweet shops in Saudi Arabia?
Most activities are open to 100% foreign ownership with a MISA investment licence, though some carry conditions such as minimum capital, a Saudi partner or sector-regulator approval. Alpha Consultancy confirms the conditions for your exact activity code before you apply.
Figures are Alpha Consultancy's analysis of the Ministry of Commerce's open datasets on the Saudi Open Data Platform (open.data.gov.sa): the register of active commercial registrations (CRs) as of 16 September 2026.
Active CRsinclude main and branch registrations, as in the Ministry's own totals. Registered in a period counts CRs created in that period that were still active on 16 September 2026; registrations since cancelled are not in the source file, so older periods read lower than the number originally issued.
Partial quarter. The Ministry's Q3 2026 file is labelled as the quarter end but only contains registrations created up to 16 September 2026, so every figure here is as of that date and the latest quarter in the charts (marked *) is incomplete.
Sector figures cover the 1,443,322 active registrations (74.7%) that appear in the Ministry of Commerce's activity association file, which lists activities for registrations created up to 31 December 2025. Registrations created after that date are not yet classified. A registration counts once in each sector it is active in, so sectors overlap.
No individual business is identified on these pages; only aggregate counts are published.
Starting a business in bakeries & sweet shops?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.