How much money does a restaurant owner make

I don't how I stumbled upon this search in Google, I certainly did not enter it myself, but it's obvious that people must google these sort of questions. The answer in brief is: not much. Certainly not running a small restaurant. Often if you count the hours you put in - and this must include all the admin work, trips to the cash and carry, phone calls etc - the hourly rate is not that high. This said, one can make a comfortable living as a owner-operator with a restaurant of about 35 covers, plus takeaway. Also as discussed on my previous post "is opening a restaurant for you", running a restaurant is, and must be, about passion and fulfilment.

Just the other day I was listening to Carol's Haidar's podcast "Your Table's Ready" (which by the way I highly recommend) where a restaurant owner was saying that you can hardly expect to make any money with just one restaurant and that's why concepts need to be scalable. This in my opinion it's BS and crazy. I appreciate running a restaurant in a capital has high costs, but betting on expansion and outside investment to eventually hope to make some money it's a risk strategy. Unsurprisingly Hacker Young accountants reported a 25% increase in insolvencies in 2019 compared to the previous year and over the same period the UK top 100 restaurant made a collective £82 million loss!
And that's exactly why I am passionate about small restaurants. If you open you must make money and if you don't, there is something wrong with the business that needs to be fixed.