Washington, DC’s restaurant and foodservice industry combined a large operating base with substantial employment and tax activity in 2024. The National Restaurant Association counted 2,661 restaurant and foodservice locations, $7.7 billion in sales, and 53,500 eating and drinking place jobs. The figures below separate District measurements from metropolitan-area data, distinguish nominal from inflation-adjusted results, and identify projections where applicable.
Contents
- Industry size and economic footprint
- Locations, sales, and employment over time
- Restaurant taxes and the post-pandemic recovery
- Wages and the full-service employment shift
- Job openings and labor-market pressure
- The wider Washington metropolitan area
Industry size and economic footprint
The National Restaurant Association’s 2025 DC state fact sheet reported 2,661 restaurant and foodservice locations in the District during 2024. Those establishments supported 53,500 jobs in eating and drinking places. The broader restaurant and foodservice category included 66,400 jobs, covering eating and drinking places as well as other foodservice positions. Thus, eating and drinking place employment made up the majority of the District’s restaurant and foodservice jobs.
Restaurant and foodservice sales totaled $7.7 billion in 2024, according to the same National Restaurant Association fact sheet. Restaurants paid $1.3 billion in total taxes during the year. The fact sheet also identified restaurants as the District’s largest private employer and said that every $1 spent in DC restaurants contributed $1.29 to the District economy.
The 2024 measurements describe a broad footprint rather than only full-service dining rooms. “Restaurant and foodservice” includes the wider industry category, while “eating and drinking place” is the narrower employment and location grouping used in several National Restaurant Association measures. Keeping those categories separate matters when comparing jobs, establishments, and sales.
The National Restaurant Association’s 2024 industry-at-a-glance report gave another economic multiplier: every additional dollar spent in DC restaurants contributed $1.31 to the District economy. The same report described the restaurant and foodservice industry as a driving force in the District economy. It also estimated that every additional $1 million spent in DC restaurants generated 4.0 jobs in the District economy.
Locations, sales, and employment over time
The National Restaurant Association reported 2,513 eating and drinking place locations in Washington, DC in 2022. That year, restaurant and foodservice jobs totaled 61,400, equal to 8% of District employment. Eating and drinking place sales were estimated at $5.5 billion in 2022.
The 2022 and 2024 figures use different labels and should not be treated as a perfectly like-for-like time series: the earlier location count is specifically for eating and drinking places, while the 2024 count covers restaurant and foodservice locations. Even so, the two snapshots show the scale of the sector across locations, jobs, and sales.
The 2024 industry-at-a-glance report projected 11.7% growth in DC restaurant and foodservice employment by 2030. That projection represented 7,200 additional jobs and implied total employment of 68,600 jobs by 2030. These are projections, not reported outcomes, and they should be read as a forecast from the cited report rather than a current count.
| Measure | 2022 | 2024 | 2030 projection |
|---|---|---|---|
| Restaurant or foodservice locations | 2,513 eating and drinking places | 2,661 restaurant and foodservice locations | — |
| Restaurant and foodservice jobs | 61,400 | 66,400 | 68,600 |
| Reported sales | $5.5 billion estimated eating and drinking sales | $7.7 billion restaurant and foodservice sales | — |
Source labels: National Restaurant Association 2024 DC industry-at-a-glance PDF; National Restaurant Association 2025 DC state fact sheet. The different category definitions and measurement years are shown explicitly in the table.
The 2024 fact sheet also reported 53,500 eating and drinking place jobs within the broader total of 66,400 restaurant and foodservice jobs. The 2022 industry-at-a-glance report recorded 61,400 restaurant and foodservice jobs and said that total equaled 8% of District employment. The job measures therefore provide both a sector count and an indication of the industry’s relative weight in the District workforce.
Restaurant taxes and the post-pandemic recovery
The Office of the Chief Financial Officer’s 2026 analysis of DC restaurant-sector post-pandemic recovery reported $567.871 million in FY 2025 tax revenue from “Food & Drink for Immediate Consumption.” The category had a 10.00% tax rate. Total restaurant-sector tax collections were $567.871 million, while total District sales tax revenue exceeded $2.090 billion, putting restaurant tax collections at about 27% of the total.
The nominal picture was stronger than the inflation-adjusted picture. Restaurant sales tax collections increased 27.1% from FY 2019 to FY 2025 in nominal terms, while DC restaurant prices increased 31.8% over the same period. After adjusting for inflation, real restaurant sales tax collections fell 3.6% from 2019 to 2025. The real value peaked in 2023 and then fell 4.4% in 2025. Of the FY 2025 restaurant sales tax total, $137.0 million was attributed to inflation, leaving an inflation-adjusted restaurant tax base of $430.8 million.
The ORA analysis headline placed DC restaurant-sector real activity in 2025 at 15.1% below 2019. This measure is broader in interpretation than the nominal tax total: it emphasizes the difference between reported dollars and activity after price changes. It is therefore possible for nominal collections to rise while real activity remains below the pre-pandemic benchmark.
For context, the District collected more than $2.0 billion in general sales and use tax revenue across eight categories in FY 2025. General retail produced $961.531 million, or 46% of total sales tax revenue, and rose 38.9% from FY 2019 to FY 2025. After inflation, real retail sales tax collections grew 14.2%; 17.8% of the FY 2025 retail tax collections was attributed to inflation.
Hotel and short-term lodging tax revenue totaled $408.046 million in FY 2025, rose 27.8% from 2019, and represented 19.5% of all sales tax collections. After inflation, real hotel activity was 13.4% higher than before the pandemic. General retail, food and drink, and hotels together accounted for 93% of total sales tax revenue.
Other FY 2025 categories included $82.647 million in parking tax revenue at an 18.00% rate, $41.856 million in liquor tax revenue at a 10.25% rate, $17.374 million in rental vehicle tax revenue at a 10.25% rate, and $9.337 million from soft drinks not for immediate consumption at an 8.00% rate. These categories help place restaurant-related tax collections within the District’s full sales-tax system, but they are not restaurant sales measures themselves.
Wages and the full-service employment shift
DC’s wage figures changed materially between 2019 and 2025. The Office of the Chief Financial Officer analysis reported that the District’s minimum wage rose from $14.00 in 2019 to $17.95 in 2025, a 28.2% increase. The tipped minimum wage increased from $4.45 to $10.00 over the same period, more than doubling.
Employment trends differed by restaurant format around Initiative 82. A National Restaurant Association DC restaurant employment trends PDF reported that, by September 2024, full-service restaurants had lost 1,800 jobs since implementation of the initiative. That loss equaled a 5.9% decline in full-service restaurant employment from May 2023 to August 2024.
The comparison with the preceding period was pronounced. In the 12 months before Initiative 82, DC’s full-service restaurant segment added 3,900 jobs, a 15.3% increase. From May 2023 to August 2024, the limited-service segment instead added 300 jobs, representing a 2.2% gain.
These figures describe changes in employment, not a complete explanation of why employment moved. They also cover distinct periods: the pre-Initiative-82 comparison concerns the prior 12 months, while the full-service decline and limited-service gain use May 2023 to August 2024. The dates and segment definitions are important when reading the results together.
Job openings and labor-market pressure
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ October 2024 JOLTS release recorded 37,000 job openings in DC, alongside 21,000 hires and 21,000 total separations. Separations included 13,000 quits and 7,000 layoffs and discharges. The corresponding rates were 4.6% for job openings, 2.7% for hires, 2.7% for total separations, 1.7% for quits, and 0.9% for layoffs and discharges.
The District had 0.6 unemployed persons per job opening in October 2024. Nationwide, the ratio was 0.9 unemployed persons per opening. The BLS reported that 36 states and DC had ratios below the national average, 11 states had ratios above it, and 3 states had ratios equal to the national average.
The JOLTS figures cover the District labor market as a whole, not restaurants alone. They are useful context for restaurant hiring because they show a market with more openings relative to unemployed people than the national ratio, but they should not be presented as restaurant-specific vacancies, hires, or quits.
The wider Washington metropolitan area
Metropolitan statistics extend beyond the District and use a different geography. In September 2023, the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metro division accounted for 82% of the Washington metropolitan area’s total nonfarm employment. That division added 70,100 jobs from September 2022 to September 2023.
The Silver Spring-Frederick-Rockville division accounted for the remaining 18% of metro employment in September 2023 and had 601,600 jobs. These divisions are not interchangeable with Washington, DC, so metro figures should not be substituted for District restaurant counts.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Washington Area Employment September 2023 release reported that leisure and hospitality in the Washington metro area gained 15,900 jobs over the year. Accommodation and food services added 16,900 jobs. The Washington-Arlington-Alexandria division supplied 14,600 of those accommodation and food services jobs, or 86% of the metro-area sector gain.
Leisure and hospitality employment grew 5.2% over the year to September 2023, compared with 4.1% nationally. Education and health services gained 20,500 jobs in the metro area over the same period, with growth of 4.6% versus 4.1% nationally. Those comparisons show the importance of the wider regional labor market while keeping the restaurant-specific District measurements separate.