How many specialty food shops are in Saudi Arabia?
Butchers, poultry, fruit and vegetables, dates, nuts, spices and dairy shops.
85.8K
active registrations list butchers, fruit & specialty food shops activities — 5.9% of classified registrations.
Ministry of Commerce data · Q3 2026 to 16 Sep
85,814 active commercial registrations in Saudi Arabia list butchers, fruit & specialty food shops activities as of 16 September 2026 — 5.9% of all classified registrations, the 6th-largest of the 64 sectors we track.
15,609 were registered in 2025 and are still active — -5.4% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Riyadh (20,086), Jeddah (11,093), Makkah (6,349) lead. Relative to its size, Tabarjal is the most concentrated: specialty food shops make up 1.8× the share they hold nationally.
25.3% of these registrations are companies rather than sole proprietorships, and the median company reports SAR 75,000 of paid-up capital.
- Active registrations
- 85,814
- 5.9% of classified CRs
- Registered in 2025
- 15,609
- -5.4% on 2024 · all sectors +15%
- Companies
- 25.3%
- 21,712 of 85,814
- Median company capital
- SAR 75k
- Paid-up, main registrations
Where specialty food shops are registered
Column height: specialty food shops by city · select a highlighted city for its page
Leading cities
Registrations, with concentration vs the national average
- Riyadh20,0860.8×
- Jeddah11,0931.2×
- Makkah6,3491.5×
- Madinah4,9181.5×
- Dammam3,4050.9×
- Taif2,5171.4×
- Khamis Mushait2,2101.5×
- Buraydah2,1721.0×
- Tabuk1,5791.1×
- Khobar1,4410.8×
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×.
Butchers, fruit & specialty food 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 fresh and preserved fruit and vegetables17,029Activity code 472111
- Retail of nuts, coffee, spices and herbal goods10,731Activity code 472170
- Retail of bakery products and confectionery9,942Activity code 472161
- Retail of meat and meat products7,692Activity code 472130
- Retail of chocolate and cocoa5,724Activity code 472162
- Retail of poultry and eggs4,450Activity code 472141
- Retail of frozen meat and poultry4,276Activity code 472143
- Retail of preserved ready meals3,723Activity code 472193
Business structures
Legal form of registrations in the sector
- Sole proprietorship64,08474.7%
- LLC20,70024.1%
- JSC8611%
- SJSC720.1%
- General partnership460.1%
- Limited partnership33<0.1%
- GCC branch17<0.1%
- Foreign branch1<0.1%
Butchers, fruit & specialty food shops by city
More in retail & trade
Common questions
How many specialty food shops are there in Saudi Arabia?
85,814 active commercial registrations list butchers, fruit & specialty food 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 specialty food shops?
Riyadh, with 20,086 — 23.4% of the national total. Jeddah follows with 11,093.
Is the number of specialty food shops growing?
15,609 were registered in 2025 and are still active — -5.4% on 2024, slower than the +15% across all sectors.
Can a foreign investor set up in butchers, fruit & specialty food 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 butchers, fruit & specialty food shops?
We confirm the licence conditions for your exact activity code, then take you from MISA licence to commercial registration and municipal licence.