Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets

At the midpoint this work grossed $10,996 for the year — $916 a month in revenue. That is a real second income and a long way short of a first one, and Census cannot tell you which of those the typical filer intended.

13,464 people filed under this code — enough that the work exists everywhere and not enough that it supports a visible trade. Most people doing Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets are doing it alongside something else.

7.4% cleared $100,000 in receipts. That is a meaningful upper tier and it is worth asking what separates them, because it is rarely effort alone.

Independent food service suits people who can control food cost, labour cost and rent simultaneously — miss any one and the other two stop mattering.

There is no qualification, licence or minimum to appear in this data — you file and you are counted. Read the receipts distribution as the price of that: no barrier at the door means no filter before the numbers.

Bottom quarter under $4,052, top quarter over $24,039: 5.9x, or $1,665 a month. At this stretch the label has stopped describing one occupation, and every summary statistic about it — including the midpoint — should be treated with suspicion.

The bottom quarter of Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets earns under $4,052 — $45,968 below the $50,020 a typical American job pays. Entering at the bottom and waiting is a live risk here, not a theoretical one, and some people never leave that quarter.

Do not start this without working in someone else’s operation first. Food margins punish inexperience faster than any other subsector here.

48.1% of 13,464 filers in 2022 took under $10,000 across the entire year: 6,474 people. Close to half of everyone in Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets is in that band, and gross receipts is the generous way of counting it.

Read that as a floor, not an estimate. Census publishes gross receipts, not net income, so everyone inside that share earned less than $10,000 suggests once costs came out — and filers who grossed well above $10,000 may still have netted nothing.

From $4,052 to $24,039 is 5.9x — the shape of a field where a minority captures most of the money. The midpoint of $10,996 is arithmetic, not a forecast, and treating it as one is the standard mistake here.

In cash terms the middle half of Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets runs $4,052 to $24,039 — $19,987 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $10,996.

Getting to $24,039, the 75th percentile, is worth $13,043 a year more than the $10,996 midpoint and $19,987 more than the $4,052 a quarter of Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets settle for.

The distance from the midpoint up to $24,039 is $13,043 — well over the $6,944 down to $4,052. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Cafeterias, Grill Buffets, and Buffets earns, and half the field is in that upper half.

Converted to a 2,080-hour year, the receipts run $1.94 an hour at the 25th percentile, $5.28 at the midpoint and $11.55 at the 75th. Read them as revenue per hour worked; the equivalent wage is lower by whatever this work costs to do.

Counted straight off the return: 4,154 filers grossed under $5,000, 2,321 took $5,000 to $9,999, 3,871 took $10,000 to $24,999, 999 cleared $100,000 and 274 cleared $250,000.