Most restaurant owners have no idea what their business is actually worth until a broker, a buyer, or a life change forces the question. This free restaurant value calculator gives you a fast, realistic estimate based on the metric buyers actually care about: your cash flow, not your sales.
Enter your revenue, profit, what you pay yourself, and a few add-backs, and you’ll see your Seller’s Discretionary Earnings, an estimated business value with a low-to-high range, the multiple behind it, and a revenue cross-check. Whether you’re thinking about selling next year or just want to know where you stand, this is the number to start with.
Unlock your estimated business value, multiple, and valuation range.
For most independent, owner-operated restaurants, value is based on a multiple of Seller’s Discretionary Earnings (SDE). You calculate SDE, apply a market multiple for your concept type, and that gives you an estimated value, usually expressed as a range rather than a single number.
SDE is the total financial benefit a single owner-operator gets from the business in a year. It’s your net profit plus your own salary and benefits, plus add-backs. It exists because two owners running identical restaurants can report very different “profit” depending on how much they pay themselves, so SDE normalizes that to show real earning power.
Independent owner-operated restaurants generally sell for about 1.5x to 3x SDE, with stronger, cleaner operations reaching the higher end. The exact multiple depends on concept type, profitability, and risk. Larger, manager-run groups (roughly $5M+ in revenue) shift to a different basis because the buyer is purchasing a transferable business rather than a job.
Because revenue doesn’t pay anyone. A restaurant doing $2M in sales with razor-thin margins can be worth less than one doing $900K with strong cash flow. Buyers are purchasing the money the business generates, so earnings-based methods are the standard. The calculator does show a revenue cross-check (about 0.32x to 0.48x of sales) as a sanity check, but earnings drive the number.
Add-backs are expenses that wouldn’t transfer to a new owner, or that aren’t part of normal operations such as your personal car lease, family members on payroll, a one-time legal bill, owner health insurance, depreciation, and interest. Adding them back reveals the real cash flow a buyer would inherit, which raises your value. Just keep them honest and documented; aggressive, unverifiable add-backs reduce buyer trust and pull your multiple down.
No and you should be cautious of any tool that claims to. This is a rule-of-thumb estimate to orient you, not a formal appraisal. Real-world value swings significantly on factors a calculator can’t see: your lease terms and remaining years, location quality, financial transparency, how dependent the business is on you personally, and current buyer demand. Treat the result as a starting range, then get a professional valuation before you list.
