How much would a small coffee shop owner actually earn?

[Whenismumhome]

Me and DH were discussing this.

We have no serious intentions of opening a coffee shop but we discussed it.

Say a small local coffee shop in a village/town that sells breakfasts, lunches, snacks and afternoon teas , how much money would the owner have left over for themselves to take home every month?

The small van was owned by Hotel Chocolat and was in their documentary the other night , It was a brand new bespoke Mercedes and must have cost the earth. The initial investment /finance would need to be taken out of any profit.

I know there's a lot of money to be made from food, the mark up is huge. I think a burger/hot dog type van would make more possibly than a coffee shop. Think you'd need to rely on people buying other stuff too like sandwiches and flapjacks.
Mobile coffee shop would make loads as pp have said.

The stalls and rides at places like winter wonderland are often run by travellers and they make huge amounts of money per event, but the whole point is that they travel to where the customers are - and lots of them! - and for stretches won't be earning anything.

There's a mobile wood-fired pizza van in my area, it operates next to parks etc so people buy their pizza and sit out, or take it home. On sunny, warm evenings there is a massive queue all evening, but on a grey, cool one, even in the height of summer, there is hardly anyone there and they disappear in winter. Trade is so fickle.

On the other hand there are several long established and always busy independent coffee shops on our High Street, despite the presence of Costa, Nero, Greggs. No idea what the profit margins are like though and there have also been some that haven't survived over the years.

Turnover does not equal profit.
Something I have had to explain to a few people recently who seem to think that daily takings is a good sign of how things are going.

Set it up really well. Make it funky and edgy and cool. Make it ‘the place to be’. Get 6 months of good turnover figures and sell it for an inflated price to some poor mug who has “always dreamed of running a coffee shop”. Preferably a mug who doesn’t understand the difference between turnover and profit

Are you my son?

That's exactly the kind of thinking he'd come up with.

You'd have to be exceptionally stupid to not realise that cafes don't keep all the money coming through the door.

There are quite a lot of costs that obviously need to come out of that money (ingredients, equipment and the premises are not free even if you don't have any paid employees) that need to be covered by selling a lot of low price items.

You could be quite busy and sell a lot of coffee and cake which is far more expensive than what it costs people to have at home, but if you don't sell enough units to cover your fixed costs, the business owner has no hope of making a living for themselves.

You'd have to be exceptionally stupid to not realise that cafes don't keep all the money coming through the door ...did many posters actually say that? 🙄
There’s a lot to talk about business disasters here. In my town (south east commuter) ....there’s a large cafe that is consistently busy and always has people queuing out onto the street. This is what they do:-

1. trendy young food - buddah bowls, clean eating plus an all day breakfast as well as cake and huge variety of shakes and smoothies.
2. they have an online click and collect menu for breakfast, Lunch and dinner so did ok even during lockdown.
3. indoor and outdoor seating.
4. prime high st location

In my Area rents are really high, anything between £90k-£250k, there is so much choice , I wonder how some can afford to stay open.
I notice that some places had to keep up with trendy menus like speciality coffee, bubble tea, matcha crepe cakes or any dessert with Matcha, giant "healthy" cookies with tumeric Or Tahini, sourdough , sourdough pizza is big,

I don’t know about other towns , but I think in our area a traditional cafe won’t last long.

In my town we have more cafes than I can count. Some offer more than just tea/coffee /lunch. One has an art gallery, they offer classes of various activities.

Extra income to help

Our newest cafe is uber trendy and turns into a fabulous cocktail bar in the evening. Many offer suberb vegan menus,homemade cakes

Along with regular expenses, also have to take into account set up costs - either to purchase a cafe with equipment in place or to equip it yourself. Which his huge and would wipe out any profits for quite a long time.

Our local cafe does okay now. However, it took years for them to build up to the point at which they are consistently busy, which is what is needed to be profitable. You can't just be busy for an hour in the morning and 90 minutes at lunch. You need to be attracting people into the shop pretty much throughout your opening hours. They got creative - hosting mum/baby groups, putting on special afternoon teas, encouraging parents with young children to come in etc etc. But it didn't happen quickly. They also have branched out to providing some catering or the odd private event in the evening which I suspect is a bit part of their profits.