Running a restaurant as a profitable business is similar to other industries. To make a restaurant profitable, you need to minimize the cost of goods sold, set prices high enough to cover overhead and find a popular location to generate foot traffic. Profit margins can differentiate widely based on the type of restaurant, whether the staff can upsell and raise the average cost for each customer, and much more. This shows that profit margins can run anywhere from 0-15%, although most restaurants fall in the 3-5% range. So, even though the answer to the question is "yes," it takes a lot of work to make them so.