Open your food business on real numbers. Not vibes.

In 2026, opening a food business in a mid-size US market costs about $155,000 for a food truck, $208,000 for a cloud kitchen, $374,000 for a boba shop, $457,000 for a coffee shop, and $969,000 for a full-service restaurant. Those are all-in planning midpoints, not lowest-possible builds. Every concept guide on this site breaks its number down line by line.

You need about 1.4 times your total opening budget in accessible cash before you sign a lease. The extra 40% covers construction overruns, permit delays, and the slow first months almost every new spot goes through. For a $457,000 coffee shop, that means $640,000 within reach, not $457,000.

A food truck is the cheapest way into food service at about $155,000 all-in for 2026, followed by a cloud kitchen at about $208,000. Both skip the expensive dining-room build-out that pushes a full restaurant toward $1 million. Cheap to open is not the same as easy to run, so check the break-even math for your concept before you pick.

A typical restaurant keeps 3 to 5 cents of every dollar as profit. That thin margin is why the numbers matter more than the vibes: track your average ticket, your prime cost against a 25/25/25 target for food, labor, and overhead, and your monthly burn.

A standard full-service restaurant breaks even at roughly 50 covers a day at a $35 average ticket, which is about $52,500 a month in revenue. Smaller concepts need more bodies at lower tickets: a coffee shop needs about 84 customers a day at an $8 average. Run the number for your own concept before you sign anything.