Who I help · Cafés
Help for independent cafés, from someone who has run them
Coffee shops, brunch spots, bakeries, and neighbourhood cafés. In a café, every sale is small, so every mistake is multiplied. I know, because I have run cafés in London and on the Costa del Sol.
In-person sessions are booked at least ten working days ahead.
Why do so many independent cafés struggle to make money?
Because the sums are unforgiving. Each sale is small, while the rent, the wages, and the bills arrive in large amounts every month. A café that opens long hours with quiet afternoons, carries a menu too long for its kitchen, throws away a cabinet of pastries at closing, and relies on the owner to cover every gap can be busy all day and still lose money. The fix starts with knowing what each guest spends, what each hour of opening earns, and what each item costs, to the penny.
Atelier Sawyer works with independent cafés across the UK, and with people opening their first one, from a single Health Check to month-by-month support.
What I see in cafés
- Small spends: a coffee here, a croissant there, and a takings figure that never quite covers the week.
- Hours that do not pay: open from seven till six, busy from eight till two.
- The cabinet: beautiful at nine in the morning, and in the bin at five in the afternoon.
- A menu that grew: every new idea added, nothing taken away, and a kitchen that cannot keep up at lunch.
- Tables that do not turn: one coffee, one laptop, and three hours of your busiest table.
- Chains on every corner: competing on price is a race you cannot win.
- The owner on every shift: opening, closing, and doing the books on Sunday night.
How I help cafés
| If you… | Start with |
|---|---|
| Know something is wrong but cannot see what | A Hospitality Health Check, £495 |
| Need help fixing it, month by month | Run, £795 a month |
| Are opening a café | Plan, £495 a month, or a Pre-Opening Diagnostic, £695 |
| Are opening a second café, or running two or three | Grow, £1,595 a month |
| Have a good café that too few people know about | Promote, £745 a month |
| Are fighting your till, your ordering, or your stock system | Digitise, from £2,950 |
| Need a website, or online ordering | Websites, from £3,250 |
The café sums
In a café, the levers are small and the results are not. Take a café serving 120 guests a day, six days a week. If each of them spends £1 more, because a pastry is offered with the coffee or the lunch menu is priced with care, that is more than £37,000 a year. That is a worked example, not a promise, but the arithmetic is the reason small things matter so much.
The same goes the other way. Twenty pastries in the bin each evening, at 80p each to make, is over £4,900 a year. An hour open each afternoon that takes less than it costs to staff is a loss you pay for every day.
So the work is unglamorous and it pays: know your spend per guest and your takings by the hour; open the hours that trade; bake and prepare to what sells; keep the menu to what the kitchen can do well at lunch; and give guests a reason to choose you that is not price.
What makes a café work
A café is the hardest kind of venue to run. Your prices are lower than a pub's or a restaurant's, your guests stay longer, and your costs are much the same. It works when you focus on the bread and butter rather than the passing fads: quality, consistency, authenticity, and community. Get those right, and the busy days become a bonus, not the thing that keeps you awake hoping the next one comes soon.
Authenticity matters more than most owners think. Many of the best independent cafés carry their owner's own story and culture, from a family recipe to a way of making coffee, and that is the one thing a chain cannot copy. I have worked with owners who tried to play it down. In my experience, guests are looking for exactly the opposite.
The cafés I have run
At Lab Café in Selfridges, we served more than 150 teas. Years later, I took that idea to the Costa del Sol.
El Punto Gastro Café, in Benalmádena, had been a failing Italian restaurant with the most offensive décor I had ever seen. An elderly neighbour, whom I called mi Duquesa, told me its food had never reached the dizzying heights of mediocrity. I refitted it and, with Covid restrictions still in place, kept the offer deliberately tight. By day it served brunch: modern Mediterranean dishes, Málaga's breakfast staples, and, this being the Costa del Sol, a full English. There were fresh juices, a long list of teas blending Spanish infusiones with a little London, and proper coffee in the style made famous by Málaga's historic Café Central. In the evenings there was no menu at all, just a free artisan tapa with every drink.
Sales were slow at first, but it washed its face from the day it opened, and while the tourists stayed away, local Spanish regulars paid the bills. A year later, I accepted an offer of three times my investment.
I have spent more than 30 years in restaurants, cafés, bars, pubs, and nightclubs, and I know the café's day from the six o'clock delivery to the last tray of pastries.
Frequently asked questions
How many coffees a day does a café need to sell to break even?
Work it backwards. Add up a week's fixed costs: rent, rates, wages, energy, loan repayments, and what you pay yourself. Divide that by the cash an average sale leaves after its ingredients, not by its price. That is the number of sales a week you need to break even; divide by your trading days. If your counter and your hours cannot handle it, you need a higher spend per guest.
How can I get customers to spend more in my café?
Offer the obvious pairing at the till, such as a pastry with the coffee; price the lunch menu so the better choice is also the better value; and make sure every member of the team suggests it, every time. Small increases, repeated across every guest, add up quickly. Then check what sells by the hour, and put your best items where people see them first.
Should I let people work on laptops in my café?
That depends on when you are busy. In quiet hours, laptop guests can fill the room; at lunch, a table held for three hours on one coffee costs you money. One idea worth borrowing from some pubs: rent out tables by the day in your quiet hours, with coffee included, so the people who want to work there are paying for the space.
Talk it through
A free 30-minute call will tell us both whether I can help, and where to start.
In-person sessions are booked at least ten working days ahead.