York’s restaurant scene sits within a large and varied food economy. The city recorded 543 restaurant, cafe or canteen premises on 1 April 2023, while tourism generated £2.08 billion in 2025 and food and drink represented 27% of visitor spend. The figures below bring together supply, regulation and visitor demand, with dates and definitions kept explicit.
Contents
- Restaurant and food-premises supply
- What the 2023–24 hygiene figures show
- The 2024–25 intervention plan
- Complaints, advice and enforcement workload
- Tourism and food-and-drink spending
- York’s establishment mix and visitor choices
Restaurant and food-premises supply
The most directly relevant recent council figure is 543 restaurant, cafe or canteen premises recorded in York on 1 April 2023. The council recorded 2,092 food premises in total on that date, so the restaurant, cafe and canteen category formed one part of a wider food system that also included retail, hospitality, care, education and mobile businesses. These are premises registrations and categories, not a count of individual restaurant brands or seating capacity.
The earlier City of York Council FSA-category profile, measured on 1 April 2017, gives useful historical context but should not be treated as current 2026 stock. It recorded 448 restaurant, cafe or canteen premises, alongside 182 hotel or guesthouse food premises, 228 pub or club food premises, and 186 takeaway food premises. Other food-service and supply categories included 51 mobile food units, 93 school or college premises and 169 caring-establishment premises.
The same 2017 profile recorded 247 small-retailer food premises, 98 other-retailer premises, 53 supermarket or hypermarket premises, 40 manufacturer-and-packer premises, 23 distributor-or-transporter premises and 1 importer-or-exporter premise. Together, these categories show why a simple restaurant count cannot describe York’s complete food offer or the council’s regulatory workload. The 2017 figures are historical City of York Council FSA-category counts from the Public Pack agenda document.
The more recent council profile supports a broad reading of the market: York had 543 restaurant, cafe or canteen premises within 2,092 total food premises on 1 April 2023. It does not, by itself, establish how many businesses opened or closed between 2017 and 2023, because the two records may reflect changes in registration, categorisation and coverage as well as changes in the local market. The 2023 figures come from the Food Service Plan 2024/2025.
What the 2023–24 hygiene figures show
The council’s 2023–24 food-hygiene workload was set against 1,207 interventions required under the Food Law Code of Practice between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024. The required total included 31 category-A premises, 546 category-D premises, 208 unrated premises and 164 newly registered premises. These categories describe intervention priorities and status; they are not restaurant quality scores.
York achieved 984 food-hygiene interventions during the same period. That included 386 interventions at category-D premises and 145 at unrated premises. There were 223 premises where no food-hygiene intervention was achieved in 2023–24. The figures describe service performance against scheduled regulatory work, rather than the number of restaurants that failed an inspection.
Among York businesses inspected in 2023–24, 93% received a broadly compliant food-hygiene rating of 3, 4 or 5, and 76% received rating 5. Across all York food businesses in the review, 96.9% were rated broadly compliant and 76.1% had rating 5. The distinction between the inspected group and all food businesses matters: the percentages have different denominators and should not be read as interchangeable.
The council’s rating system measures food-hygiene compliance at inspection. It does not measure food taste, hospitality, atmosphere, value for money or service speed. A high rating therefore gives information about the inspected hygiene standard, not a complete judgement on a restaurant experience.
The 2024–25 intervention plan
For 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025, York identified 875 premises officially requiring a food-hygiene intervention. The plan covered 24 category-A premises, 68 category-B premises, 212 category-C premises, 415 category-D premises, 29 category-E premises and 127 unrated premises at the start of the year.
The plan specified 846 food-hygiene interventions, or 870 when the twice-yearly category-A schedule was included. Its food-standards plan required 14 high-risk category-A interventions. It also estimated about 100 interventions for new premises and 44 for unrated premises, 158 in total. These are council plans and service measures, not a census of restaurant quality.
| 2024–25 measure | York figure |
|---|---|
| Premises requiring a food-hygiene intervention | 875 |
| Planned food-hygiene interventions | 846 |
| Planned interventions including twice-yearly category-A schedule | 870 |
| Food-standards interventions for new and unrated premises | 158 |
| High-risk category-A food-standards interventions | 14 |
The plan also placed the work in a wider public-protection context. York’s Public Protection budget for environmental health, trading standards and licensing was £1.3 million per year in the 2024–25 plan, with 3,660 officer hours allocated to deliver the food service. Those figures cover the service described in the plan, rather than restaurant inspections alone.
Complaints, advice and enforcement workload
Food-safety statistics also capture activity initiated by residents, businesses and other agencies. In 2023–24, York received 62 complaints about food safety, 105 complaints about premises hygiene and 13 complaints about food standards. The council took one food sample during the period and received 56 formal infectious-disease notifications.
The same reporting period recorded 289 requests for food-business advice. York had food-related Primary Authority agreements with 7 businesses, a formal arrangement that can support consistent regulatory advice. The count of advice requests should not be treated as a count of restaurants, and complaint totals do not establish how many complaints were substantiated.
The food team also provided 113 pre-inspection audits in the 2023–24 reporting year. Among the businesses receiving those audits, 72% received food-hygiene rating 5, while 83% maintained or increased their food-hygiene rating. These results describe the businesses receiving the audits and the outcomes reported by the council; they do not prove that the same percentages would apply to every York restaurant.
Tourism and food-and-drink spending
York’s restaurants operate in a visitor economy that was worth £2.08 billion in 2025. Visit York reported that the tourism economic contribution increased 3.6% from 2024 to 2025. Food and drink accounted for 27% of York visitor spend in 2025, although this is a whole visitor-economy share and is not a restaurant-only revenue measure.
Visit York recorded 8.88 million visitors in 2025. That total comprised 7.01 million day visitors and 1.87 million staying visitors. The staying-visitor total increased 9% from 2024 to 2025, and the average stay across York accommodation categories was 3.1 nights.
| York tourism measure | 2025 figure or change |
|---|---|
| Tourism economic contribution | £2.08 billion |
| Change in tourism contribution from 2024 | 3.6% increase |
| Total visitors | 8.88 million |
| Day visitors | 7.01 million |
| Staying visitors | 1.87 million |
| Change in staying visitors from 2024 | 9% increase |
| Average stay across accommodation categories | 3.1 nights |
Domestic travellers contributed £1.50 billion to York’s economy in 2025, while overseas visitors contributed £0.57 billion. These contributions are tourism-economy measures, not restaurant sales. The visitor and spending figures are reported in York’s Economy Continues to Grow: STEAM 2025 Data Released.
For restaurants, the figures indicate the scale of the surrounding market rather than a guaranteed demand level for any individual venue. Day trips, overnight stays, domestic travel and overseas travel may produce different patterns of meal occasions, but the supplied figures do not quantify those patterns separately.
York’s establishment mix and visitor choices
Spend data in the MIY Shareholder Committee Narrative Report identified more than 700 separate food-and-drink establishments in York. In the report’s comparison, York had 3.5 food-and-drink establishments per 1,000 residents. The report presents these as comparison data for its stated period, published in 2024; they should not be combined with the council’s 2023 restaurant, cafe and canteen registration count as though the measures had identical definitions.
The spending mix was led by cafes and restaurants, which accounted for 54% of food-and-drink spend in the report’s comparison. Fast-food establishments accounted for 23%. Overnight visitors spent 4 times more of their eating-and-drinking-out budget on restaurants than on fast food in York. This last measure compares spending patterns among overnight visitors; it is not a statement that restaurants received four times the number of visits.
| Food-and-drink measure | Reported figure |
|---|---|
| Separate food-and-drink establishments identified | More than 700 |
| Establishments per 1,000 residents | 3.5 |
| Cafes and restaurants’ share of food-and-drink spend | 54% |
| Fast-food share of food-and-drink spend | 23% |
| Overnight visitors’ restaurant spending compared with fast food | 4 times more |
The establishment and spending figures are reported in Annex A – MIY Shareholder Committee Narrative Report. They provide a useful view of the competitive landscape and visitor spending patterns, but the report’s comparison period and definitions should be retained when using them. In particular, the more-than-700 establishment figure is not a current 2026 census, and the 54% and 23% shares describe food-and-drink spend in that comparison rather than all York household spending.
Taken together, the available measures show three different dimensions of York’s restaurant economy: registered food premises, regulatory activity and visitor-linked spending. The figures are strongest when read within those boundaries: the 2023 council count describes premises, the 2023–24 and 2024–25 measures describe food-service regulation, and the 2025 tourism measures describe the wider visitor economy.