The Back Office - guides
How much do coffee shops actually make?
The internet says coffee has 75% margins. The internet is describing the cup, not the shop. Here is the honest P&L of an independent cafe - modeled industry ranges from a working multi-unit operator, labeled as such.
Revenue first: the one-line business
Every cafe is one multiplication: transactions x average ticket = revenue. A healthy neighborhood shop runs 200-300 transactions a day at a $9-10 average ticket. That is $2,000-3,000 a day, roughly $60-90k a month, $700k-1.1M a year. Most first shops land lower for year one - $40-55k a month is a normal ramp.
Where it goes: the four buckets
| Bucket | % of revenue | What is in it |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of goods | 28-32% | Beans, milk, food, paper. Paper costs more than the coffee in most drinks. |
| Labor | 30-35% | Wages, taxes, workers comp, and the premium-pay mistakes when you understaff breaks. |
| Occupancy | 10-15% | Rent, CAM, insurance, utilities. Over 15% and the shop is a museum you fund. |
| Everything else | 12-15% | Software, repairs, marketing, professional fees, delivery-app commissions. |
| Net | 8-15% | 12% is a good month. Anyone promising 20% is selling something. |
So what does the owner take home?
On $70k/month at 12% net: about $8,500. Before the owner's own salary expectations, debt service, and the broken compressor. A well-run single shop is a good job that you own, not a wealth machine. The wealth shows up at locations two through five, after location one runs 90 days without you.
The three levers (there is no fourth)
More transactions - reviews, speed, daypart expansion. Bigger ticket - every +$1 on the average ticket at 250/day is $7,500/month. Lower leak - a 2-point COGS leak at $70k/month is $1,400 walking out every month. Pick two per quarter and work them like a menu recipe.
Run the numbers on your shop
The food cost calculator prices any drink for margin in a minute, and the menu engineering tool shows which items carry the shop and which exist for one guy named Gary. The full P&L teardown - real composite numbers, month by month - is in the playbook. The letter below gets it first.