Buying or opening a bakery in Spain: costs, payback and permits

An existing bakery in Spain sells via traspaso for about €48,500 on average: one with its own bakehouse (obrador) goes for about €75,000, a bread shop for about €13,500, based on 54 listings in 2026.

Opening a bakery with its own bakehouse from scratch costs €90,000–120,000. Ordinary bread carries 4% VAT; payback in our example is about three years.

Looking at a bakery for sale in Spain?

Below: what a bakery costs as a traspaso and together with its premises, how a bakehouse with an oven differs from a bread shop, what opening from scratch and a franchise cost, which permits an oven and the bread itself need, what a bakery earns with a night shift paid under the collective agreement, how it is taxed and what to check before buying.

The page includes a payback calculator with an illustrative bakery.

If you are after a coffee shop without your own bread, see Buying or opening a café or bar in Spain; for a grocery, see Supermarket for sale in Spain.

What an existing bakery costs

We reviewed 54 traspaso listings for bakeries, bakery-patisseries, bakery-cafés and bread shops (Wallapop, which also carries idealista and fotocasa listings, and Milanuncios, October 2026).

The median is €48,500, the average about €74,000, and half the businesses fall between €16,000 and €85,000. These are asking prices: they come down in a deal.

The bakery traspaso market is concentrated in Catalonia: 28 of the 54 listings.

Outside Catalonia and the Valencian Community, most listings are small shops without a bakehouse, which is why the median there is low.

A typical bakery in the sample is about 90 m² at a rent of about €13 per m² a month; a traspaso costs on average 42 months’ rent.

Examples from the sample: a 210 m² bakery-patisserie with a bakehouse and oven in Valencia’s Quatre Carreres district — €49,000 with rent of €1,300; a 109 m² bakery with a bakehouse and two ovens in Barcelona’s Gràcia — €56,000 with rent of €1,350 plus VAT; a 145 m² bakery with a bakehouse in Terrassa — €80,000 with rent of €765; a 12 m² bread stall in a Valencia market — €22,000; a bakery with a bakehouse in Barcelona’s Sant Antoni — €505,000 with rent of €3,000 plus VAT.

Bakehouse or bread shop: what a traspaso sells

Legally, a traspaso is an assignment of the premises lease together with the equipment; the seller’s company and the premises are not included.

But very different businesses are sold as a panadería, and the price depends above all on whether there is a bakehouse:

• Bakery with a bakehouse. An oven, a dough mixer, proving cabinets, its own recipes and usually trade customers — the neighbourhood’s bars and restaurants. You are buying a production unit, and with it the bakers’ night shift and the bakehouse permit, which is the hardest thing to obtain from scratch.
• Bread shop (despacho de pan). The bread comes from someone else’s bakery or is baked off from frozen dough. Entry is cheaper and the permit simpler, but the margin is lower and the business depends on its supplier.
• Bakery-café. Bread sales plus coffee and pastries on the spot. This is partly hospitality: the seating area follows café rules.

Bakeries are also sold together with the premises.

There are four such listings in the sample: 100 m² premises with a bakery licence, oven and bakehouse in Alicante — €155,000; premises with a bakery-café licence in Granollers — €160,000; a bakery with a bakehouse in Alicante — €220,000 (or a traspaso for €45,000 at €1,500 rent); a 150 m² bakery-café in Valencia’s Zaidía — €600,000 (or a traspaso for €350,000).

The payback on such a purchase is compared with the rental yield of the premises, not with a traspaso price.

What opening a bakery from scratch costs

In a business plan published by Emprendedores magazine for a 180 m² bakery in rented premises in Zaragoza, opening costs about €88,000 including VAT, of which the oven and machines are €43,000.

The trade service qamarero puts bakery equipment at €30,000–50,000. The main items:

• Oven and machines — €30,000–50,000: a deck or rack oven, dough mixer, divider, moulder, proving and retarder cabinets. Second-hand is cheaper, but the oven is the main breakdown risk.
• Fit-out and services — from a few thousand euros in a former bakery to tens of thousands in empty premises: electrical capacity for the oven, gas, ventilation, bakehouse floors and walls.
• Display counters, furniture, till — €8,000–12,000; the technician’s project and permits come on top.
• A reserve — several months of fixed costs: in the Emprendedores plan the first year runs at a loss. How to size it is covered in Cash gap.

Hence a guide figure: a bakery with its own bakehouse from scratch costs about €90,000–120,000, excluding the premises.

The median bakery with a bakehouse sells as a traspaso for €75,000, with the oven already installed and permitted.

Bakery-café franchises cost about the same: Panea — €90,000 excluding VAT and building works, with a 2% royalty; Panaria — €120,000 including an €18,000 entry fee, with a 3.5% royalty on sales; El Mimbre — €40,000–120,000 plus VAT, with a 3% royalty.

Franchises often work with frozen dough baked off in the shop. How to read a franchise agreement and what to check in it is covered in Franchise for sale in Spain.

Which permits a bakery needs

Spain’s retail liberalisation law (Ley 12/2012) lets shops of up to 750 m² open on a declaration, without a licence, and bread shops are in its annex (headings 644.1–644.3).

Bread production (heading 419) is not in the annex.

A bakehouse with an oven therefore opens under the region’s activity-control law and the town hall’s bylaw, and what decides the procedure is the power of the oven and machines.

• Valencian Community. An activity counts as harmless and opens on a simple notice only if it meets every condition in Annex III to Ley 6/2014, including: machine motors totalling no more than 9 hp, no combustion releasing gases, noise below 70 dBA. If any one is not met, an environmental declaration (declaración responsable ambiental) is needed, and the business may open one month after filing it (art. 69.1). A gas oven or a powerful dough mixer usually moves a bakehouse into the second regime.
• Catalonia. Bakeries with an oven above 7.5 kW fall under the environmental notification regime (comunicació, Annex III to Ley 20/2009, item 7.7): the notice comes with a project including an environmental report and a technician’s certificate, and work may start once it is filed (art. 52). A professional bakery oven is usually above that threshold — check the power on the oven’s rating plate.

Food safety. A bakery selling to the final consumer is not entered in the national register RGSEAA but in the regional one, on a notice or declaration (art. 2.2 of RD 191/2011 as amended by RD 1021/2022).

It may supply its own bread to bars and shops only if this is no more than 25% of annual volume or no more than 500 kg a week in total, within its local area (between regions — within 50 km), and not to businesses registered in the RGSEAA, with a separate declaration (art. 3 of RD 1021/2022).

Larger trade supply counts as production and requires RGSEAA registration — when buying, ask what share of revenue comes from bars and restaurants.

The bread itself. Spain’s bread quality standard (RD 308/2019) caps salt in ordinary bread at 1.31 g per 100 g (since April 2022), and ordinary bread may be sold within 24 hours of baking; after that only separately and with a sign.

The word «artesano» may be used if shaping is done by hand, the dough ferments in bulk, batches are small and the work is led by a master baker (art. 10).

For a buyer this is more than labelling: check the seller’s recipes against the standard.

What a bakery earns

The defining feature of a bakery is the night shift. Bread by seven in the morning means bakers start at night.

Under the Valencian Community bakery collective agreement for 2026, a group 3 employee earns €20,574.90 a year and a group 5 employee €17,782.95 (12 monthly salaries plus 3 extra payments), and every hour between 22:00 and 06:00 carries a supplement — €2.16 for group 3.

A baker who runs a shift independently sits roughly in group 3, a sales assistant in group 5. With four night hours per shift, a baker costs about €22,500 a year gross.

Employer social security in 2026 adds about 32.6% (30.65% general plus 1.95% accident insurance for bread making).

Two bakers and two sales assistants cost the bakery about €107,000 a year, roughly €8,900 a month.

The second big cost is energy: the oven, cabinets and fridges run every day, and the Emprendedores plan names electricity as the largest utility bill.

Bakery payback calculator

The calculator shows an illustrative bakery with a bakehouse and shop of about 150 m²: a €75,000 traspaso (the median for bakeries with a bakehouse) plus €20,000 for oven repairs, counters and start-up cash.

Revenue is €25,000 a month excluding VAT (€300,000 a year, about €960 per trading day), flour, fillings, packaging and resale goods take 38%, staff €8,900 a month (two bakers and two sales assistants; the owner works without a salary), rent €1,450 a month, and other costs (oven electricity and gas, water, insurance, gestor, machine repairs, marketing) €2,000 a month.

Pre-tax profit is €37,800 a year, after tax about €30,600, and the €95,000 investment pays back in about 3.1 years.

Two caveats. First, bakery staff are an almost fixed cost, so profit swings with revenue. If revenue falls by 10%, pre-tax profit drops from €37,800 to €19,200; by 15%, to €9,900.

Break-even is about €19,900 of revenue a month. Second, the model assumes the owner works in the bakery without a salary.

Hire a manager at the agreement’s top group and after-tax profit falls to about €5,200 a year, and the investment takes over 18 years to pay back.

How to read a payback period and what to compare it with is covered in Payback period.

Take revenue from bank statements, till reports and VAT returns (modelo 303), and purchases from flour invoices: the volume of flour shows how much bread the bakery really bakes.

How sellers justify their price is explained in How to value a business for sale.

Taxes: VAT and the module system

• VAT. Ordinary bread (pan común), frozen dough for it and bread-making flour are taxed at 4% (art. 91.Dos.1.1º of Ley 37/1992); other foods — «special» bread with added ingredients, pastries and confectionery — at 10% (art. 91.Uno.1.1º). A bakery till usually handles three rates: 4% on bread, 10% on pastries and coffee, 21% on other goods.
• A bread shop run by a sole trader. For VAT, a retailer is someone who sells goods without processing them; for products they made themselves, they are not treated as a retailer (art. 149 of Ley 37/1992). So a shop selling bought-in bread run by a sole trader pays VAT through the supplier’s surcharge (recargo de equivalencia), while a bakery with its own bakehouse pays VAT on its own bread in the normal way. Whether baking off frozen dough counts as processing is a question for a tax adviser.
• Modules. In 2026 the module system (estimación objetiva) is available to bread production (heading 419.1) and to bread and pastry shops (644.1–644.3) with no more than six workers. For 419.1 the annual base is €14,530.89 per working owner, €6,248.22 per employee, €49.13 per m² of premises and €629.86 per 100 dm² of oven deck. Example: owner, 4 employees, 150 m² and an oven with a 3.6 m² deck — about €49,200 of annual base before depreciation and reduction coefficients. That is more than our illustrative bakery’s profit: modules are not always better than actual accounts.
• Module threshold. Modules apply if last year’s revenue was up to €250,000 — the Tax Agency’s position, although Congress did not ratify the decrees extending these thresholds. The bakery in our example, with €300,000 of revenue, no longer qualifies.
• SL. A bakery run through an SL pays corporate tax: in 2026, with turnover under €1m, 19% on the first €50,000 of profit and 21% above. How to take the profit out is covered in Salary or dividends from a Spanish SL.

What to check before buying a bakery

1. The lease. A business tenant may assign the lease without the landlord’s consent, but the landlord may raise the rent by 20%, and must be notified within a month (art. 32 LAU). The lease may prohibit assignment or change these terms (art. 4.3 LAU). The remaining lease term is the main asset in a traspaso.
2. The bakehouse permit. Who holds it and for what activity: production with an oven or retail only. Do the oven’s power and type match it — a new gas oven or a more powerful one may need a new permit.
3. Oven and machines. Age, last overhaul, connected power, gas contract. Replacing the oven is the most expensive breakdown a bakery can have.
4. The numbers. Monthly revenue for 2–3 years from bank statements, the till and VAT returns; flour invoices; the share of trade supply to bars and restaurants and the agreements behind it — will those customers leave with the seller.
5. Debts and staff. The buyer of a running business is liable for the seller’s tax debts (art. 42.1.c LGT) unless they obtain a Tax Agency debt certificate before the deal, issued within 3 months (art. 175.2 LGT); for social security debts (art. 168.2 LGSS); employees transfer with all their rights, and seller and buyer are jointly liable for wage debts for 3 years (art. 44 ET). In a bakery these are night bakers with seniority and established supplements — ask for a staff list with contracts and rotas.
6. VAT on the deal. The sale of a whole business able to operate on its own is outside VAT (art. 7.1 of Ley 37/1992); a simple transfer of rights and items usually carries 21% VAT — the structure of the deal is decided with a tax lawyer.

How an existing business is checked before a deposit is described on the traspaso audit page; if you are buying the company that owns the bakery, you need a full due diligence.

If you are moving to Spain to run this business

A non-resident can buy a bakery, but a non-EU national can only live in Spain and run it personally with a residence permit — usually the self-employment permit, initially for one year.

The golden visa has been abolished, and the startup visa does not fit an ordinary business of this kind.

Relotus explains how the self-employment permit works and how it differs from employment in «Cuenta propia in Spain».

The sensible order: first find out whether the permit fits you, and only then pay a deposit.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to buy a bakery in Spain?

In a sample of 54 listings from 2026, a bakery traspaso costs about €48,500 on average. A bakery with its own bakehouse and oven goes for about €75,000, a shop selling bought-in bread for about €13,500. In Barcelona, its province and the Valencian Community the median is €61,000–64,500. These are asking prices.

How much does it cost to open a bakery from scratch?

A bakery with its own bakehouse in rented premises costs about €90,000–120,000. The oven and machines cost €30,000–50,000; the rest is the bakehouse fit-out and services, counters, the project, permits and a reserve for the first months. Bakery-café franchises cost €90,000–120,000.

Is it better to buy a bakery with a bakehouse or a bread shop?

A bread shop is more than five times cheaper and simpler to open, but depends on its bread supplier and earns a lower margin. A bakery with a bakehouse costs more and needs a night shift, but sells its own product and can supply local bars.

What permits does a bakery need in Spain?

A bread shop of up to 750 m² opens on a declaration. A bakehouse with an oven opens under the region’s activity-control law, and the procedure depends on the power of the oven and machines. The bakery is also entered in the regional food-safety register.

How much does a bakery earn in Spain?

In our illustrative example, with €300,000 of annual revenue, two bakers and two sales assistants, the bakery makes about €30,600 after tax if the owner works in it. Without a working owner the profit almost disappears.

What is the payback period for a bakery?

In our illustrative example, about 3.1 years on a €95,000 investment. A bakery is sensitive to revenue: a 15% drop cuts pre-tax profit almost fourfold.

What VAT applies to bread in Spain?

Ordinary bread and bread-making flour are taxed at 4%. Bread with added ingredients, pastries and confectionery are taxed at 10%, as is coffee served in a seating area.

Key points on buying a bakery in Spain

• A bakery traspaso costs about €48,500 on average; with a bakehouse and oven about €75,000, a bread shop about €13,500.
• The market is concentrated in Catalonia and the Valencian Community, where the median is €61,000–64,500.
• Opening a bakery with its own bakehouse from scratch costs €90,000–120,000; the oven and machines alone €30,000–50,000.
• What matters most in the deal is a bakehouse permit that covers the oven, the remaining lease term and the real volume of flour and revenue.
• The bakers’ night shift transfers to the buyer and makes a bakery sensitive to revenue; payback in our example is about 3.1 years with a working owner.

Sources

• Ley 12/2012 — BOE; Valencian Community Ley 6/2014 — BOE; Catalonia Ley 20/2009 — BOE.
• RD 191/2011 — BOE; RD 1021/2022 — BOE; RD 308/2019, bread quality standard — BOE.
• LAU, arts. 4 and 32 — BOE; LGT, arts. 42 and 175 — BOE; Estatuto de los Trabajadores, art. 44 — BOE; Ley 37/1992 (VAT) — BOE.
• Orden HAC/1425/2025 (2026 modules) — BOE; Orden PJC/297/2026 (contributions) — BOE.
• V Convenio colectivo de panadería y pastelería de la Comunitat Valenciana — DOGV No. 10223 of 27.10.2025, 2026 pay tables — DOGV No. 10288 of 26.01.2026 (text — CCOO).
• Opening cost benchmarks — Emprendedores, qamarero; franchises — Panea, Panaria, El Mimbre.
• Bakery traspaso and sale listings — Wallapop, Milanuncios, October 2026.