How many restaurants are in Riyadh?
Restaurants, cafeterias, fast food, takeaway and mobile food outlets. Figures for Riyadh, compared with the rest of the Kingdom.
29.8K
active registrations in Riyadh — the most of any Saudi city.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
Riyadh has 29,772 active commercial registrations listing restaurants & food outlets activities as of 16 September 2026 — 23.1% of the Kingdom's total and the most of any city.
Restaurants & food outlets account for 6.7% of Riyadh's classified registrations, below their 8.9% share nationally.
Across the Riyadh region as a whole there are 35,214.
- Restaurants & food outlets in Riyadh
- 29,772
- 23.1% of the Kingdom
- City rank
- 1 of 69
- Cities with registrations in the sector
- Concentration
- 0.8×
- Below the national average
- Nationally
- 128,871
- 8.9% of classified registrations
Restaurants & food outlets: leading cities
Riyadh highlighted
More sectors in Riyadh
Restaurants & food outlets in other cities
Common questions
How many restaurants are there in Riyadh?
29,772 active commercial registrations in Riyadh list restaurants & food outlets activities as of 16 September 2026 (Ministry of Commerce data).
How does Riyadh compare with other cities?
Riyadh ranks 1st of 69 cities for restaurants, with 23.1% of the national total.
How do I set up in restaurants & food outlets in Riyadh?
Confirm the activity code and its licence conditions, obtain a MISA investment licence (for foreign owners), register the company with the Ministry of Commerce, then get the municipal (Balady) licence for your premises in Riyadh. Alpha Consultancy runs the whole sequence.
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.
Opening in Riyadh?
We take you from MISA licence and commercial registration to the municipal licence for your premises in Riyadh.