How many restaurants are in Saudi Arabia?
Restaurants, cafeterias, fast food, takeaway and mobile food outlets.
128.9K
active registrations list restaurants & food outlets activities — 8.9% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
128,871 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list restaurants & food outlets activities as of 16 September 2026 — 8.9% of all classified registrations, the 3rd-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
27,688 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +9.3% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (29,772), Jeddah (15,732), Makkah (9,468) lead. Relative to its size, Rabigh is the most concentrated: restaurants make up 1.7× the share they hold nationally.
28.8% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 100,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 128,871
- 8.9% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 27,688
- +9.3% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 28.8%
- 37,158 of 128,871
- Median company capital
- SAR 100k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where restaurants are registered
Column height: restaurants by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh29,7720.8×
- Jeddah15,7321.1×
- Makkah9,4681.5×
- Madinah6,6341.3×
- Dammam5,0600.9×
- Taif3,8891.4×
- Khobar3,0351.1×
- Khamis Mushait2,7941.2×
- Buraydah2,6720.8×
- Tabuk2,4371.2×
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×.
Restaurants & food outlets: 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
- Restaurants with table service45,263Activity code 561010
- Cafeterias (buffets)39,047Activity code 561021
- Fast food outlets, including pizza21,483Activity code 561031
- Takeaway meal services7,674Activity code 561040
- Grilled fish and seafood shops6,671Activity code 561092
- Grilled meat skewer shops (mashakik)3,537Activity code 561093
- Mobile ice cream vans1,881Activity code 561050
- Food trucks1,651Activity code 561060
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- Sole proprietorship91,65171.1%
- LLC36,22728.1%
- JSC5850.5%
- SJSC1850.1%
- General partnership1180.1%
- Limited partnership43<0.1%
- Foreign branch41<0.1%
- GCC branch21<0.1%
Common questions
How many restaurants are there in Saudi Arabia?
128,871 active commercial registrations list restaurants & food outlets 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 restaurants?
Riyadh, with 29,772 — 23.1% of the national total. Jeddah follows with 15,732.
Is the number of restaurants growing?
27,688 were registered in 2025 and are still active — +9.3% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in restaurants & food outlets 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 restaurants & food outlets?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.