NAICS 72241Industry · 5-digitlocal market

Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)

This industry comprises establishments, known as bars, taverns or drinking places, primarily engaged in preparing and serving alcoholic beverages for immediate consumption. These establishments may also provide limited food services. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 2,708
Under 10 employeesA: 53%
Establishments · USA: 40,258
Employment · USA: 401,424
Payroll · USA: $10.0B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–459022%

5–983331%

10–1968625%

20–4949618%

50–99903%

100–199100%

200–49920%

500+10%

Of 2,708 Canadian establishments with employees, 53% have fewer than ten — mostly small operators.

Where they areA

Quebec1,18644%

Ontario53120%

British Columbia34413%

Alberta2339%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Accommodation and Food Services, US · opened 2020

85.5%

1 year

72.1%

3 years

59.3%

5 years

41.6%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 722, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

local competitionmedium capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 722 Food services and drinking places

Easy to open and hard to keep open: food, labour and rent leave single-digit margins, delivery platforms take a further cut, and failure rates are high. Franchises trade margin for a tested format.

Who sets the price: The operator, against every other meal within reach.
The software it runs on: Restaurant point of sale, online ordering, delivery integration, scheduling and inventory — sold with payments attached.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Screened one level up. Nothing is filed at this exact code; the screen for 7224 Drinking places (alcoholic beverages) covers it.

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 7224

Drinking Places (Bars & Pubs)One thing must be true

binding constraint: growth quality

Per-capita alcohol consumption is not a mood, it is a measured series, and it is falling faster than the fixed costs of a room. Statistics Canada records 6.8 litres of absolute alcohol sold per person aged 15 and over in 2024/2025, down from 8.3 in 2020/2021 and 8.0 in 2013/2014, and the dollar value of alcohol sales fell in nominal terms for a second straight year while every input price rose. Beer — the volume a pub actually turns — is down from 76.1 litres a head to 53.6 over the same period. The rent, the licence and the staff on a slow Tuesday do not decline with the trend line. Late-night licensing, liability and staffing make this the least forgiving hospitality format, and this is the rare screen where the demand curve can be read off an agency table rather than argued. The structure compounds it: 1,423 of 2,708 Canadian establishments employ fewer than ten people and 13 employ a hundred or more, so there is no scale operator to sell to and no franchise system carrying the format. An entrant buys a fixed cost base and rents a shrinking occasion.

NAICS 72244 vendors named8 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Restaurant point of sale, online ordering, delivery integration, scheduling and inventory — sold with payments attached.

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Who works here

The occupations employed in Accommodation and food services, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Managers in food service and accommodation One industry 87.6%

Occupations in food and beverage service One industry 84.1%

Food support occupations One industry 75.3%

Specialized occupations in services Mostly one sector 68.6%

Cooks, butchers and bakers Mostly one sector 60.2%

Service supervisors Mostly one sector 49.3%

Tourism and amusement services occupations Mostly one sector 10.2%

Cashiers and other sales support occupations One industry 8.6%

Support occupations in accommodation, travel, tourism and amusement services Mostly one sector 7.3%

Taxi, personal service and delivery service drivers Mostly one sector 5.2%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 4.3%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 1.7%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 1.5%

Customer and information services representatives Across the economy 1.4%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 1.3%

Accounting, insurance and related business administrative occupations Across the economy 1.2%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 1.2%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 1.2%

Administrative, property and payroll officers Across the economy 1%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 72241. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
722410	Drinking places (alcoholic beverages)	2,708	screened at 7224