How many restaurants are in Chicago?
More than 7,000 restaurants are trading in Chicago as of August 2026 (7,381 on the current record), out of 21,570 that have held a restaurant licence in the city since 2002.
Counted from the City of Chicago’s licence and inspection record, as of August 2026. “Trading today” means the location has not been confirmed closed. A restaurant that has just stopped trading typically still holds a valid licence, and the closure only becomes visible months later, so this figure is a slight over-count of the most recent period rather than a live census. How this is measured.
Why published counts of Chicago restaurants disagree
Chicago does not license “restaurants”. It licenses Retail Food Establishments, and that one category also covers grocery stores, corner shops, pharmacies, hotels, school and hospital cafeterias, fitness studios, dispensaries and airport concessions. A count taken straight off the licence file is therefore far larger than the number of restaurants, and will list drugstore chains among the city’s biggest food operators. The figure above excludes those categories at the source. Counts taken from delivery apps or review sites have the opposite problem: they only ever see the operators who chose to list.
Chicago restaurants by cuisine
The 7,381 restaurants trading today, by concept, with how many have attempted the same concept in Chicago since 2002 and how many of those were still open 4 years on. Each cuisine has its own page with the neighbourhoods it clusters in.
| Cuisine | Open now | Share | Since 2002 | 4-yr survival |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coffee / Cafe | 971 | 13.2% | 2,733 | 63% |
| Mexican | 712 | 9.6% | 2,019 | 57% |
| Italian / Pizza | 462 | 6.3% | 1,414 | 63% |
| American / Burger | 461 | 6.2% | 1,692 | 57% |
| Bakery / Dessert | 432 | 5.9% | 1,524 | 57% |
| Bar / Tavern | 407 | 5.5% | 904 | 82% |
| Sandwich / Sub | 356 | 4.8% | 1,146 | 66% |
| Fried Chicken | 248 | 3.4% | 915 | 53% |
| Chinese | 182 | 2.5% | 622 | 67% |
| Japanese / Sushi | 156 | 2.1% | 346 | 81% |
| Health / Juice | 120 | 1.6% | 387 | 61% |
| Breakfast / Diner | 107 | 1.4% | 257 | 64% |
| Catering / Events | 102 | 1.4% | 310 | 57% |
| Latin / Caribbean | 99 | 1.3% | 337 | 54% |
| Mediterranean / Greek | 59 | 0.8% | 214 | 53% |
| BBQ | 58 | 0.8% | 282 | 45% |
| Seafood | 58 | 0.8% | 215 | 60% |
| Middle Eastern | 57 | 0.8% | 216 | 52% |
| Thai | 54 | 0.7% | 179 | 72% |
| Indian / South Asian | 53 | 0.7% | 124 | 59% |
| Hot Dog / Chicago Classic | 36 | 0.5% | 217 | 49% |
| Boba / Tea | 34 | 0.5% | 62 | 68% |
| Pan-Asian | 29 | 0.4% | 75 | 64% |
| Vietnamese | 29 | 0.4% | 85 | 60% |
| Unclassified or too rare to describe | 2,099 | 28.4% | 5,295 | — |
| All Chicago restaurants | 7,381 | 100% | 21,570 | — |
The unclassified row is 2,099 restaurants whose cuisine cannot be read from the licence record: a registered name that gives nothing away, or a concept with too few examples in Chicago to say anything reliable about. They are shown rather than dropped so that the breakdown sums to the total above it.
Go deeper
- Chicago restaurants by neighbourhood covers the same record for each community area, with its concept mix and the addresses that have turned over most.
- How long Chicago restaurants last, by cuisine draws censoring-aware survival curves rather than a single rate.
- Where each cuisine clusters is the density and saturation map by ZIP.
- The Chicago Restaurant Index lists what opened this month.
Common questions
- How many restaurants are in Chicago?
- More than 7,000 restaurants are trading in Chicago as of August 2026 (7,381 on the current record), out of 21,570 that have held a restaurant licence in the city since 2002.
- What counts as a restaurant in this count?
- A location that has held a City of Chicago Retail Food Establishment licence and whose concept classifies as a restaurant. The city's licence category is much broader than the word suggests: it also covers grocery stores, corner shops, pharmacies, hotels, school and hospital cafeterias, fitness studios, dispensaries and transit concessions. Those are excluded here, which is why this figure is far lower than the raw count of retail food licences in Chicago.
- What is the most common type of restaurant in Chicago?
- Coffee / Cafe, with 971 currently trading, 13% of the city's restaurants. It is followed by Mexican (712) and Italian / Pizza (462).
- Why does the cuisine table not add up to the city total?
- It does, and the last row is the reconciliation. 2,099 of the 7,381 trading restaurants cannot be assigned a cuisine from the licence record, either because the registered name gives nothing away or because the concept is too rare in Chicago to describe from data. They are shown as their own row rather than dropped, so the breakdown sums to the headline.
- How many restaurants open and close in Chicago each year?
- Openings are directly observable and are published on the Chicago Restaurant Index. Closures are not: a restaurant that stops trading usually keeps a valid licence for months, and the closure only becomes visible when an inspection or an expiry confirms it. That lag runs to about three years for full confidence, so no honest count of recent closures can be published, and this page does not publish one.
- Where does this data come from?
- The City of Chicago's own business licence record and food inspection data, covering every licensed food establishment since 2002. It is the primary source, not a scrape of a delivery app or a review site, both of which only see restaurants that chose to list.