“Only the Bad Die Young: Restaurant Mortality in the Western US”, Tian Luo, Philip B. Stark2014-10-31 (economics, survival analysis)⁠:

Do 9⁄10 restaurants fail in their first year, as commonly claimed? No.

Survival analysis of 1.9 million longitudinal microdata for 81,000 full-service restaurants in a 20-year U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics non-public census of business establishments in the western US shows that only 17% of independently owned full-service restaurant startups failed in their first year, compared with 19% for all other service-providing startups.

The median lifespan of restaurants is about 4.5 years, slightly longer than that of other service businesses (4.25 years). However, the median lifespan of a restaurant startup with 5 or fewer employees is 3.75 years, slightly shorter than that of other service businesses of the same startup size (4.0 years).