Key takeaways
- 1By job growth, the best business to start in Texas right now is a food truck (+11.3% jobs over the year), then a coffee shop (+8.3%) and a gym or fitness studio (+5.0%). All three are growing faster in Texas than in the country as a whole.
- 2Texas is a bigger market, not a faster one, for most of the fourteen types: it ranks 16th to 19th among states for growth in its top three. Child day care is the exception the wrong way, shedding 3% of jobs while the nation lost 1.1%.
- 3Forming the LLC costs $300 and most new businesses owe no franchise tax, which is why Texas ranks third nationally for starting a business. The constraint is the corner, not the state.
In this article
Every "best business to start in Texas" list on the internet is written by a company that sells LLC formations. The ideas are the same from list to list, nobody ranks them, and none of them cite a number. This one does. We took the fourteen business types first-time owners open most often, pulled the official count of locations, jobs and wages for each one in Texas from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and ranked them by how fast they added jobs over the year to March 2026.
The short answer
By job growth, the best business to start in Texas right now is a food truck. Coffee shops are second and gyms third, and all three are growing faster in Texas than they are nationally.
| Business type | Texas jobs, one-year change | US jobs, one-year change | Texas locations | Avg weekly wage in Texas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Food trucks & mobile food | +11.3% | +7.6% | 1,115 | $497 |
| Coffee shops & cafés | +8.3% | +5.6% | 8,361 | $430 |
| Gyms & fitness studios | +5.0% | +4.0% | 3,790 | $483 |
| Pet care & grooming | +1.7% | +2.5% | 2,288 | $601 |
| Nail salons | +1.2% | +2.1% | 1,893 | $632 |
Two things to notice before you buy a truck. Food trucks are the fastest-growing type in 22 states this quarter, so Texas is riding a national wave rather than leading one. And 1,115 food trucks with payroll is a small base: a 11.3% jump is about 475 jobs statewide. Coffee shops added more jobs in absolute terms, roughly 7,000, on a base of 91,000.
Texas is bigger, not faster
The surprise in the data is how ordinary Texas looks once you compare it with the other 49 states on growth rather than size. For its three fastest-growing types, Texas ranks 19th (food trucks), 17th (coffee shops) and 16th (gyms) among states. It is a huge market for all three, which is exactly why it is not a fast one: the easy corners were taken years ago.
Where Texas is clearly different is the bottom of the table. Child day care lost 3.0% of its jobs over the year in Texas against 1.1% nationally, which ranks the state 40th of 50. Dry cleaning and laundry fell 3.8% (2.9% nationally). Landscaping fell 2.0% (1.4% nationally). If one of those is the business you had in mind, the state trend is against you and the local numbers need to be unusually good.
The full ranking
| # | Business type | Jobs, one-year change | Locations, one-year change | Locations | Jobs | Avg weekly wage | Typical cost to open |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Food trucks & mobile food | +11.3% | +5.3% | 1,115 | 4,681 | $497 | $50,000–$300,000 |
| 2 | Coffee shops & cafés | +8.3% | +6.4% | 8,361 | 91,239 | $430 | $50,000–$300,000 |
| 3 | Gyms & fitness studios | +5.0% | +3.7% | 3,790 | 50,068 | $483 | $30,000–$200,000 |
| 4 | Pet care & grooming | +1.7% | +2.5% | 2,288 | 17,675 | $601 | $10,000–$50,000 |
| 5 | Nail salons | +1.2% | +3.5% | 1,893 | 5,808 | $632 | $20,000–$100,000 |
| 6 | Full-service restaurants | +0.4% | +0.9% | 21,608 | 508,332 | $557 | $50,000–$300,000 |
| 7 | Cleaning & janitorial | −0.1% | +0.8% | 5,602 | 91,749 | $642 | $10,000–$50,000 |
| 8 | Auto repair shops | −0.2% | +1.4% | 6,795 | 35,664 | $1,192 | $50,000–$300,000 |
| 9 | Hair & beauty salons | −0.4% | +0.3% | 5,294 | 26,815 | $718 | $20,000–$100,000 |
| 10 | Quick-service restaurants | −0.6% | +1.5% | 22,937 | 511,736 | $434 | $50,000–$300,000 |
| 11 | Bars & taverns | −1.5% | −0.8% | 2,946 | 34,202 | $509 | $50,000–$300,000 |
| 12 | Landscaping services | −2.0% | +1.6% | 5,892 | 63,713 | $997 | $10,000–$50,000 |
| 13 | Child day care | −3.0% | +0.4% | 6,131 | 82,530 | $557 | $30,000–$150,000 |
| 14 | Dry cleaning & laundry | −3.8% | −3.6% | 1,289 | 11,001 | $576 | $25,000–$150,000 |
The cost column is Neur's planning range for the category, the same figure a Neur report starts from before it prices your actual lease and build-out. The live version of this table updates when BLS publishes a new quarter.
Reading the two growth columns together
The jobs column and the locations column disagree in useful ways.
Food trucks: jobs up 11.3%, locations up 5.3%. Existing trucks are adding staff faster than new trucks are appearing. That is a healthy sign for a new entrant: demand is growing faster than supply.
Coffee shops: jobs up 8.3%, locations up 6.4%. Both are growing, and nearly in step. The market is absorbing new shops. Texas has 8,361 of them, so the question for you is density on your street, not demand in the state.
Nail salons: jobs up 1.2%, locations up 3.5%. Locations are opening faster than jobs are being added, which means the average salon is getting smaller. That is the early shape of a crowded market.
Auto repair: jobs down 0.2%, locations up 1.4%, and the best wages of the fourteen at $1,192 a week. Shops are opening but not hiring, which usually means the constraint is technicians, not customers. If you are a technician, that is an opportunity; if you planned to hire four, read it as a warning.
Child day care: jobs down 3.0%, locations up 0.4%. Centers are staying open and running leaner. Texas pays $557 a week against $632 nationally, and the sector has been losing staff to retail and warehousing. A new center competes for workers before it competes for children.
Why Texas, specifically
WalletHub's 2026 ranking puts Texas third among states for starting a business, first for business environment, eleventh for access to resources and 34th for business costs. The last number matters: Texas is not cheap to operate in. Commercial rent in the four big metros and property taxes on the building, passed through in the lease, are what the "no state income tax" line leaves out.
What is cheap is the paperwork. Forming an LLC costs $300 (Form 205 with the Secretary of State). There is no annual report fee. Every LLC files a franchise tax report in May, but a business under the no-tax-due threshold, $2.65 million in revenue for 2026 reports, owes nothing and files only the Public Information Report. Our LLC versus sole proprietorship guide has the same figures for New York and Connecticut if you are comparing.
One state, several markets
Texas is four large metros, a dozen mid-size cities and a long border, and the ranking above averages all of them. The same business type reads differently depending on where you stand.
In Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, coffee and fitness are deep, competitive markets where the winning move is a specific format in a specific neighborhood, not "a coffee shop." In San Antonio and the suburban rings, the growth types still have gaps, and rents are a third lower. In the Rio Grande Valley and the smaller cities, a single operator with a good truck or a well-run studio can be the market leader in a year, because the first page of Google results is the whole market.
The free saturation check counts a business type per 100,000 residents for any Texas city and shows where it sits against the state. It is the quickest way to see whether your city is already full of the thing you want to open.
How to use this
Use the ranking to pick a shortlist, not a winner. A type that is growing statewide and under-supplied in your city is the combination you want; a type that is growing statewide and crowded on your street is the most common way new owners lose money, because the state number made them confident.
Then run the numbers for the address. A Neur report counts the competitors a customer would see from your corner, reads the county's employment trend from the same BLS table used here, scores the demographics within your drive time, and prices the plan against your actual rent. It takes a few minutes and costs less than one week of the lease you are about to sign.
Quick answers
- What is the best business to start in Texas?
- Measured by job growth over the year to March 2026, food trucks and mobile food (+11.3%), coffee shops (+8.3%) and gyms and fitness studios (+5.0%). Measured by how many already exist, quick-service and full-service restaurants, with more than 21,000 locations each. Growth tells you a type is hiring, not that your corner has room for one more.
- What is the most profitable business in Texas?
- Public data does not report owner profit by business type. The best-paying of the fourteen types is auto repair, at $1,192 a week on average for staff, followed by landscaping at $997. Profit for the owner depends on rent, labor and competition at one address, which is what a Neur report estimates.
- How much does it cost to start a business in Texas?
- The state fee to form an LLC is $300 (Form 205), with no annual report fee; a franchise tax report is filed each year but businesses under $2.65 million in revenue owe nothing. The business itself ranges from $10,000 to $50,000 for a cleaning or pet-care company to $50,000 to $300,000 for a restaurant, coffee shop or food truck.
Sources and method
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, private ownership, 6-digit NAICS, first quarter 2026 compared with first quarter 2025, Texas and national, via the QCEW open data API, pulled October 20, 2026; locations are establishments reporting payroll. State rankings by growth are Neur's comparison of the same BLS figures across all 50 states. Startup cost ranges are Neur's planning ranges by category. Texas Secretary of State, Form 205 instructions (LLC certificate of formation, $300); Texas Comptroller, franchise tax no-tax-due threshold for 2026 reports ($2.65 million). WalletHub, "Best & Worst States to Start a Business" 2026, as reported by CultureMap Houston and Dallas, October 2026.
Researched and drafted with AI assistance from the public data above, then reviewed by Neur before publishing. Figures carry the date they were checked; the update date changes when a figure is corrected. How Neur Research works. Informational only; not business, legal or financial advice.
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