Together with the growing number of restaurants, the consumption expenditure of Norwegian households rose. In 2018, households spent approximately 98 billion Norwegian kroner on restaurants and hotels. That same year, consumers seemed to especially like Italian, Greek and Mexican restaurants.
In general, Norway’s restaurants and cafes generated a constantly growing revenue in the past years, peaking at nearly 38 billion Norwegian kroner by the end of 2017. The same applies to pubs; their revenue reached its peak at roughly two billion Norwegian kroner in 2017.
Regarding the average wages of employees in the restaurants and beverage serving activities industry, they amounted to almost 31 thousand Norwegian kroner in 2019. Taking a closer look at cooks, it is noticeable that their monthly income stayed between 31 thousand and 34 thousand Norwegian kroner on average from 2017 to 2019.
Among the restaurant chains in the Scandinavian country, Egon restaurants are well-known. The company opened their first restaurant in 1984 and is owned today by Norrein AS. The concept is based on a high degree of self-service, where guests have to order and pay for all food and drinks themselves at the bar. Within three years, Egon’s revenue decreased by almost three billion Norwegian kroner, amounting to around 30 billion Norwegian kroner in 2018.
In addition, there is a popular Norwegian coffeehouse chain called Kaffebrenneriet. As of November 2019, by far most stores were located in the capital Oslo, where the chain was originally founded in 1994. The chain operates countrywide and has outlets in Trondheim and Fredrikstad, among other cities. Kaffebrenneriet's main business consists of the sale of coffee and other coffee-based drinks, but the chain also offers coffee beans, sweets and snacks to be purchased in the store.
