The red-hot real estate market has long been blamed for driving up residential rents, but New York City’s restaurants are also getting squeezed, and despite an increase in business, are increasingly struggling to turn a profit.

The renowned restaurateur Drew Nieporent, creator of the Myriad Restaurant Group, which owns such New York icons as Nobu and the TriBeCa Grill, said he has recently passed on deals because of high rents.

“It’s awful, the real estate right now. I would have 20 more restaurants in New York if the price of real estate was fair. It’s not,” he said.

Even in places where start-up restaurants used to find deals, areas such as the Lower East Side and Brooklyn, Mr. Nieporent said, “The rents are stupid … It stifles innovation.”

New York’s $8 billion a year restaurant industry is notoriously transient. The city has more than 21,000 permanent food establishments, according to the New York City Department of Health. About 3,800 restaurants both opened and closed last year, a tally that is consistent with numbers in recent years. Seventy percent of restaurants close within the first five years after opening.

Mr. Nieporent said that despite high prices, some owners are still starting up. He suggested that high rents have made it even more difficult for restaurants to survive.

Generally, rents are driven up by the amount of risk landlords bear, realtors who specialize in the restaurant business say. Restaurants pay rent as a percentage of their gross sales, or if they are new or inexperienced, they pay a minimum rent related to the square footage of their space.

“Most landlords really don’t want restaurants unless they’re a proven commodity,” the chairman of the retail leasing and sales division for Prudential Douglas Elliman, Faith Hope Consolo, said. “Once you are a success, you can command anything.”

Several restaurant owners said they look for rents of less than 6% of gross sales, and say that anything higher than 10% is virtually untenable.

Some established restaurants have negotiated rent payments of as low as 2% of gross sales, a senior vice president of the Corcoran Group, Neal Sroka, said.

In recent years, larger developments, such as the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle or One Beacon Court, have brought in celebrity chefs and restaurateurs at a discount to give a space more character.

“It’s more of a marriage than a straight real estate deal,” Mr. Sroka said. “The restaurateur has to understand that the landlord is his partner, and the landlord has to understand the restaurateur is bringing something to his building that will enhance the value of the residence or the office.”

Mr. Sroka said some high-profile restaurants have recently passed on much of the construction costs, sometimes as much as $10 million worth. Landlords provide money for renovations then may charge a higher percentage for rent.

In January, the popular Midtown Scandinavian restaurant Aquavit moved from the old Rockefeller townhouse on East 54th Street to a bigger location on East 55th Street, for a considerable savings, its owner, Hakan Swahn, said.

Mr. Swahn said the restaurant’s success allowed him to negotiate a better deal this time around.

“It helps having a long track record, and that was the number one criteria for landlords. The fact we have been in one spot 17 years – they were cutting us deals,” Mr. Swahn said.

As developers and landlords negotiate discounted deals for proven winners, start-ups are having a harder time establishing themselves.

The editor of Zagat’s New York edition, Curt Gathje, said the higher rents are affecting the industry.

“They are really changing the whole landscape of affordable dining in New York,” he said. “It is getting impossible to open a low-price restaurant for people, even in places like the Lower East Side.”

Some are finding innovative ways to cope. In the meatpacking district, a few new establishments have negotiated terms that give landlords a percentage of alcohol sales in exchange for lower rent, Ms. Consolo said.

Ms. Consolo also predicted the city would be awash with a dozen new wine bars by the end of the year. In order to expand margins with alcohol sales, where owners affix the biggest markups, customers will be able to eat dinner and buy bottles of wine to take home.

Another option is to move to more remote locations. A chef and first-time owner, Alexandre Tchistov, spent seven months looking for a space to open Restaurant Sorrel, a bistro that he recently opened in the Prospect Heights section of Brooklyn.

Mr. Tchistov considered spaces on the Lower East Side, and in Park Slope, but the spaces were too small and the rents too high. Mr. Tchistov eventually found a place on a quiet side street that costs $2,300 a month for 800 square feet.

“It’s more safe. My budget was very limited,” he said. “So far, it’s okay.”