Coffee ideology

Coffee ideology Industry insights & business strategy for new and existing cafe owners. đź“ŤSydney

Most cafés don’t have a sales problemThey have a labour problemYou can be busy all day and still not make moneyBecause l...
09/04/2026

Most cafés don’t have a sales problem
They have a labour problem

You can be busy all day and still not make money

Because labour quietly eats your margins
An extra hour here
An extra staff member there
And suddenly you’re over 40%

No amount of extra customers fixes that

Control your labour
And profit starts to show up

08/04/2026

The cafe industry is heading in a new direction and it’s shifting fast.

Over the next few years, automated workflows are going to take over, not to replace people, but to speed things up. self service taps, hot milk dispensers, pre batched espresso. All of these yield faster drinks, better consistency and less reliance on highly skilled labour. Because speed is becoming the new non-negotiable for consumers who don’t like to wait, but at the same time expect quality not to change.

07/04/2026

The biggest mistake café owners make after year one is, they relax.
Year one is about survival. You’re just trying to keep the doors open. Cover wages. Pay suppliers.Keep customers coming back.

And if you make it through? You feel like you’ve “made it.” But here’s the problem. Survival is not success.

What I see all the time in year two and three is Supplier prices go up But menu prices don’t move. Your Milk increases. Your Coffee increases.your Food costs creep up. And Margins shrink quietly. Then wages creep up.

More Penalty rates. Staff want pay rises. Suddenly Labour percentage goes from 32 to 36%. And no one recalculates the impact.

Then there’s the menu. Items that don’t sell aren’t removed. Items with weak margins linger. Items that slow down service. they all stay!
Just Because “we’ve always had that.”

Complacency doesn’t look dramatic. It looks comfortable. And that’s what makes it dangerous.

Year one is about surviving. But Year two should be about optimising.
Review your pricing. Reset your wage targets. Engineer the menu.
And Audit your expenses. Because if you don’t intentionally improve the numbers They slowly decline on their own.

Making it past year one is an achievement. But long-term profit comes from discipline. Survival mode must transition into optimisation mode. That’s how cafés actually grow.

06/04/2026

When people look at opening a café, they usually fall in love with a space first.

I’m a bit different. . I start with the numbers.

This week I was out looking at a potential site and found a corner position that made a lot of sense straight away.

There’s a laneway running down the side, which means visibility from multiple angles. Street parking out front, a full car park across the road, and extra access at the rear.

That solves a major issue most cafés face before you even open, getting people in easily.

Revenue is not profit!
02/04/2026

Revenue is not profit!

01/04/2026

Your café is busy… but here’s the problem.
You tables are full, there’s a Queue out the door. Your Coffee machine running non-stop.

It looks successful from the outside.

But let me ask you something. What’s your average customer spend?
If people are sitting for 90 minutes and spending $9…you don’t have a demand problem. You have a revenue per seat problem.
Now let’s go deeper.

If your combined cost of goods and labour is sitting at 70% That means before rent, power, subscriptions, insurance and equipment repayments you’ve already given most of your profit away.

31/03/2026

Today, the Reserve Bank of Australia announced that merchants will no longer have the right to impose a card payment surcharge on consumers, starting from the first of October 2026.

That means no more adding 1 to 2 percent at the terminal every time someone taps.

Sounds good for customers…but here’s the problem.

The cost doesn’t disappear. Someone still has to pay it.

It just comes out of the cafes margin instead.

30/03/2026

2026

30/03/2026

Everyone’s talking about petrol prices, but there’s a bigger shift happening in the background that most café owners aren’t watching.

The flow-on effect of the fuel shortage.

We’re right in the middle of it now, and it’s starting to hit where it matters most… your suppliers.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been seeing more delivery invoices come through with fuel levies added on. At first it’s small, just a few dollars here and there, easy to overlook. But it won’t stop there.

Suppliers can only absorb so much.

24/03/2026

The number one reason your café is failing isn’t because of bad coffee. And it’s not the location or a bad instagram feed.

It’s that you’re not tracking your numbers properly.

And a lot of cafe owners simply don’t know this, they track their sales religiously, but they’re expenses are forgotten and are wildly out of control. there’s no system, and no structure and they’re just guessing day to day.

I’m using to track COGS, wages , sales and margins.

Link in bio 👌🏼

23/03/2026

Most cafés are doing this wrong!

They add a surcharge every time a customer taps their card… and think that they’re covering their costs.

Well Technically, yes.

But practically? It’s hurting your business.

Every surcharge creates friction in a transaction.
The Customer taps… sees the extra fee… and instantly they make a mental note.

Even if it’s small. It chips away at trust.

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157 Victoria Road
Marrickville, NSW
2204

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