Do most new restaurants in Dubai really fail in the first year?

No published Dubai figure supports that claim — no government body releases closure statistics, so the famous "90 per cent fail in year one" line is folklore, and the "80–85 per cent within two years" version traces to one chef's opinion quoted by AGBI in April 2024, not to data. What is documented is heavy new supply, with around 1,200 new restaurant licences issued in 2024 (ValueTheMarkets, 3 July 2025 — retrieved 2 August 2026). Treat any confident failure rate as a sales line, not a statistic.

From Why Some Restaurants Struggle in Karama — Even When the Area Is Full of Diners — the full reading, with the method behind this answer.