Just watch a couple of episodes of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. That will cure you or whomever you are posting about of any cafe-owning fantasies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it for someone who has no experience of running or working in a small business?

I feel like there are more interesting ways to set money on fire.

Running a business is so much work. It is easy to lose everything very quickly with a small business, especially if you are an emotional decision maker instead of a callous business minded person comfortable with hard decisions.

Con would be this is the opposite of retirement

Hobby/passion jobs rarely make money, and more often will predictably lose money while also consuming all of the owners' time and energy.

Consider carefully what you hope to achieve with your ambition - pocket money, or a real income? A structured schedule to give you something to keep yourself busy with income being merely incidental? Further developing or building on a skill set you already have? Trying to build a real business which can expand and create significant wealth?

You may find there are many alternatives which involve far less financial risk, e.g., if you don't like working in a retail store or in someone else's restaurant or cafe you can quit with no further obligation. Any business which requires an investment in furnishings and equipment and which ties you contractually to a lease and/or to service subscriptions is fraught with risk. Putting your savings into a potential financial black hole may not be the vision you have for a secure retirement.

Same advice we gave to would be entrepreneurs. Learn the basics on someone else's nickel. Work at several places of the sort you are interested in. See the logistics, staffing, customer processes. See if it is appealing or a turnoff.

Don't open a cafe. Open a business that people need and that makes money. Like a laundromat or similar. Boring and dependable.

honestly your best bet is to try and buy/take over a small business by someone else looking to get out of it and take a look at their books. lots of people would rather see their business continue if it breaks even or better, rather than just have it disappear.

Yes this is idiotic. You are envisioning the Hallmark movie version of owning/running a cafe. The reality is super early mornings, constantly paying bills, never being able to find reliable staff, constantly dealing with stuff breaking, etc. It's like the stress of home ownership, being the boss, and having a new baby, but all at once and rolled into one thing. And you will not make any money. Even if you tough it out and it's successful, it will take 5 years before you see any money, and then you still might just be scraping by. It is not a retirement job, at all.

I do think it's possible to start a retirement business that isn't like this. The ones I've seen that worked were some kind of skill teaching where you rent space and start small (teach a few classes a week). I've known people who did this teaching dance to kids, and teaching music, and eventually expanded it into a bigger business with employees where they had their own space. But the key was that they were starting with something they had real skill and experience in, so it was fairly easy for them to find their initial customers and build from there. With a cafe, you are selling to the general public, and the thing you are selling is not grounded in your skill or experience unless you've been working in cafes all your life. So you're a newbie in a field with a very high fail rate. It's not worth it.

You are crazy to consider this.

Have you ever worked in a foodservice or customer service type job? What is it about opening a cafe that sounds appealing to you?

Hahahaha

Yep, setting money on fire. 95% of new restaurants go under within 1-3 years.

Why not just give all your money to me? I won’t even make you wake up at 4 am to set up every day!

Anonymous wrote:Is it for someone who has no experience of running or working in a small business?

I feel like there are more interesting ways to set money on fire.

Is it for someone who has no experience of running or working in a small business?