The short answer
Oliver Group's fee for a cafe or restaurant valuation is fixed and set by the annual turnover of the business, starting at $1,495 + GST where turnover is under $2 million. Across the wider market, full valuation reports in Australia typically run $5,000–$15,000+ at traditional firms: and most firms publish no prices at all, so you only find out by asking for a quote. Hospitality does not attract an industry surcharge; it attracts scope. Two features of the industry generate most of the analysis hours in a cafe or restaurant file: the heaviest owner add-back profile in small business, and a lease that carries much of the value and therefore has to be read in full. How simple or contested those two features are in your venue determines how much work the file takes, not the fee. One clarification before the detail: this article covers what it costs to have a cafe or restaurant formally valued: not what your venue is worth. For realistic hospitality multiples and how the earnings base is built, see our companion article on how much a cafe or restaurant is worth; for how we run these engagements end to end, see the hospitality and food service industry page.
The published packages for hospitality
A single venue trading through one company or trust, valued at a current date, carries no surcharges at all. Oliver Group's fees are set by the annual turnover of the business: a Small Business Valuation is $1,495 + GST for turnover under $2 million, a Medium Business Valuation is $2,495 + GST for turnover between $2 million and $10 million, and a Large Business Valuation is $3,495 + GST for turnover over $10 million. For small-business reports a draft is delivered in 2 business days and for medium-business reports in 3 business days; the delivery date for a Large Business Valuation is agreed before commencement. Delivery time starts once payment and all required information have been received. Retrospective valuation dates are +$495 each and additional entities are +$795 each. The fee is fixed in writing before work begins and never depends on the concluded value.
Annual turnover under $2 million. Draft delivered in 2 business days.
Annual turnover $2 million to $10 million. Draft delivered in 3 business days.
Annual turnover over $10 million. Delivery date agreed before commencement.
Driver one: add-back intensity: hospitality's heaviest workload
No industry puts more distance between the profit and loss statement and the true earnings of the business than hospitality, and closing that distance is paid analysis. The typical owner-operated venue has three layers of adjustment. Owner labour first: the owner works the machine, the pass or the roster for fifty-plus hours a week and draws profit instead of a wage, so a market salary for the role actually performed has to be evidenced and deducted before any multiple is applied. Family wages second: a spouse on the books above market rates, or teenagers rostered below them, both need normalising to what the labour would cost a purchaser. Personal expenses third: the vehicle, the phone, the travel, the household items running through supplier accounts: each claimed add-back needs documentation before it can be added back. The consequence is in the work, not the fee: every adjustment is a small piece of analysis, and every contested adjustment is a larger one. A venue where one partner asserts a dozen adjustments and the other disputes them is a different engagement: the normalisation schedule becomes the battleground, and the analysis, and the time it takes to get the information complete, scale with it. The fee does not.
Driver two: lease analysis: the document that carries the value
A cafe's fit-out, walk-in trade and goodwill all depend on the right to keep occupying premises the business does not own, which makes the lease much of what a purchaser is actually buying: and a valuation that has not read it is not supportable. The review has a defined checklist: remaining term and options, because eighteen months without an option is a countdown, not a tenure; assignment and landlord-consent provisions, because a sale cannot complete without them; demolition and relocation clauses, common in shopping centres, which can cap value regardless of trading performance; and rent review mechanisms and make-good obligations, which shape the earnings and liabilities a buyer inherits. The consequence is again about the work, not the fee. A standard five-plus-five retail lease with ordinary assignment provisions is an afternoon's disciplined reading. A shopping-centre lease with a demolition clause, turnover-rent reporting and fit-out obligations, or a venue trading across two adjoining tenancies on separate leases, is document review measured in days.
The cash-takings problem: thin records buy more work, not a smaller fee
Hospitality's cash history follows it into every valuation. A market value conclusion can only rest on earnings the evidence supports, so where takings records are thin or inconsistent, POS reports that do not reconcile to banking, missing end-of-day summaries, a step-change in reported revenue after an EFTPOS migration, the valuer cannot simply accept the profit and loss statement and move on. The response is verification: reconciling POS data to bank deposits, testing gross margins against supplier purchase records, and cross-checking the venue's cost-of-sales and rent ratios against the ATO's published small business benchmarks for cafes and restaurants in its turnover band. Where the gaps close, the earnings base is documented and the engagement proceeds normally. Where they do not, the valuer adopts conservative assumptions and states the limitation in the report: a valuation cannot capitalise earnings the records will not evidence, and no reputable valuer will include undocumented cash the accounts never saw. For an owner, the practical point is blunt: an unreported-cash history costs you twice: first in the extra verification work and the time it takes before valuation analysis can begin, then in the smaller supportable earnings base the surviving evidence can defend.
What makes a cafe or restaurant valuation more involved
These are the features that add analysis to one of these engagements. Only the two fixed add-ons noted in the list change the fee:
- ·Multiple sites: every venue brings its own lease, trading history and add-back schedule; where sites trade through separate entities, each additional entity adds $795
- ·Franchise agreements: the franchise term must be read alongside the lease term, transfer and training conditions affect saleability, and royalties and marketing levies need normalising
- ·Unreported-cash question marks: inconsistent takings records add the verification work described above before valuation analysis can begin
- ·A retrospective valuation date: valuing at a past date restricts the evidence to what was knowable at the time, and adds $495 per historical date
What complexity changes, and where to go next
For a single-site venue with clean records, documented add-backs and a simple lease position, the engagement proceeds normally. A venue with contested add-backs, thin takings records or a difficult lease pays the same turnover-based fixed fee, for the same scope of report: what changes is the amount of analysis, the time it takes to get the information complete, and how much of the claimed earnings the evidence can support. One limit applies at every package: the fixed fee does not cover a cross-check of the conclusion against a second or third methodology, expert witness work or tax advice. For the full market landscape, free calculators, broker appraisals, accountant letters, desktop estimates and formal reports, see the pricing guide in our resources library. Oliver Group prepares independent valuations only; we are not a registered tax agent and do not provide tax, legal or financial advice: your accountant applies the report in their domain. What we provide is a fee you know before you start, for a number the evidence defends.