the real cost of opening a cafe

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Right now, I'm in front of the first ever cafe that me and my business partner ever opened. And today, I want to talk about the real cost of doing something like this. Not the money part, but the time, mental health, and all the hard lessons that we had to learn so you don't have to. Let's go.

[00:00:19]Let me give you a quick background on who I am. My name is Marat and I'm one of the co-founders of Toasted Bagels and Coffee. and my business partner Jafar.

[00:00:28]We both met at the University of Washington our junior year of college and became best friends first. We both grew up in the restaurant industry. When I was in high school, I helped my family start their first business. Immigrant family, not much English, so we figured it out as we went. For Jafar, he opened up a small business up in Lynwood, Washington for his family. So, we both had that in our blood before we ever started working on Toasted together.

[00:00:52]Neither of us came from money.

[00:00:53]Everything that we put into Toasted was from savings, from work ever since the age of 15, plus personal credit cards and some loans from friends and family.

[00:01:01]Both with the immigrant mindset, we bootstrapped much as we could to chase that American dream. Jafar had been working on the toasted concept for a while. He's the visionary, the operator, the one who sees how everything fits together in a room. I had always been obsessed with making videos and building an audience ever since the age of 10, just like this. So when he pitched me the idea of Toasted, it just made sense with his ops experience and my marketing background. We just decided to do it. So that's the short version. As we make more videos on this YouTube channel, you'll get more context, but that's enough for now. The reason why I feel like we've earned the right to talk about this is this. This location that we are in right now was our first. And today we're at five locations, four Toasteds, one Jaded, which is our main production hub with over 50 team members who make everything that we do possible every day. We've been through it, so let's get into it. Lesson one, the systems are not built for you. If you're doing this for the first time, especially solo, you're going to run into some problems nobody warns you about. The systems that are supposed to help you open a business will probably feel like they're working against you.

[00:02:06]Let me tell you about the most unnecessary lawsuit. We had a lawsuit with the city over our two exit doors being half an inch too close to each other. And we didn't even build the building ourselves. To build this counter, we went through a full plumbing plan interview with the city that took us over 9 months and tens of thousands of dollars. And at the end, the city told us that we did not even need to do it. The problem is there's almost too much information online. A lot of it was outdated. And if you were to call three different departments of the city, you would get three different answers on what you should do for your space. These two issues alone cost us over $60,000 in damages and delays before we even got to serve our first customer. So, here's the tip for lesson number one. We actually did have architects and consultants in the beginning, but then money ran out and we had to figure out everything ourselves. And honestly, that was probably the best thing that ever happened to us. We know every inch of what it takes to open a location in a way that we could have never learned from a textbook. So the tip isn't just hire consultants. It's this. If you can, do keep them. And if you can't, don't let that stop you. Learn the process.

[00:03:12]Document everything because once you do that, it becomes a permanent asset for your future location. If you want to know some of the ways that we saved money opening our first location, we would love to make a whole separate video on that. Comment down below scrappy and maybe we might. All right, back to the video. God. Lesson number two. Everything will go wrong. I don't mean some things. I mean everything at some point will go wrong. Before we opened this location, we were broken into three times. Three times. Wrong equipment ordered or equipment that didn't fit our space, contractors behind schedule, materials that showed up damaged, and a landlord that went dark for weeks when we needed them the most.

[00:03:52]Here's what I would tell someone starting out. Don't start. In all seriousness, don't plan for things going wrong. Expect it. Build it into your mindset from day one. So, here's my lesson two tip for you. Stop trying to prevent problems and start working on your reaction speed. From our experience and what we've seen in the small business world, it's not the ones who've had the smoothest ride of building their business. They're the ones who got knocked down horribly, but got back up before the 10 count. Build your toolkit of electricians, plumbers, attorneys before you ever need them. Have them ready before the emergency because when things go wrong, and they will, you'll be ready because the cost isn't the problem itself. It's the time you lose figuring out who to call. And talking about cost, let's talk about lesson number three. You will constantly run out of money. Let's talk numbers briefly. Not to scare you, but to be real with you. Depending on your buildout, your menu, your design, your market, opening a cafe can run you anywhere from $100,000 to $400,000.

[00:04:52]That's a pretty wide range. And the reason for that is because every decision that you make will either take or add to that budget. What I would tell anyone, whatever number that you land on, add a 20 to 25% on top of that as an emergency fund, an actual set aside and don't touch fund. We had that at certain points of our build. But unfortunately, we even had to come up with a plan C to finish out this build. If you're a first-time entrepreneur, especially like us at the age of 22 and 23, it's genuinely so hard to get a loan. high interest rates or flatout rejections. We put a lot on our personal credit cards.

[00:05:25]And I'm not going to sit here and recommend that route to anyone.

[00:05:28]Unfortunately, that was the hand that we were dealt with and we played it. But just know that going in. If you made it this far, don't forget to like and comment. Here's your lesson three tip.

[00:05:36]Treat your emergency fund like it doesn't exist until you actually really need it. The mistake most people make is that they see that buffer and start making decisions that work against it.

[00:05:46]Keep it invisible. And if you burn through it, which we did, your only job is to find plan C without ego. We had to make calls and ask for help when we did not want to. Do it anyway. Pride is the most expensive thing on your budget. And here's lesson number four. Your mental health is your most expensive thing.

[00:06:03]This is definitely the one most people don't talk about enough.

[00:06:06]Entrepreneurship is probably one of the hardest things you can sign up for. The risk is scary and the stress is constant. People ask this all the time, our friends, family, strangers online.

[00:06:16]And why would we ever take a risk this big at a young age? And honestly, the way we saw it, not starting was the biggest risk we could have taken because we knew what we had. We knew what we were capable of. And walking away from that would have cost us more than any buildout in the long run. But obviously, it's not easy. There were stretches of time where we would try to find hope in any way, shape, or possible form wherever we could. And I think what saved us genuinely was that we had each other. We didn't have to fake the emotions that we were feeling because we were best friends first. And honestly, what helped us through the highs and lows is when we started documenting our journey online. When we started documenting our journey, something happened that we didn't expect. People started showing up following our journey. And when our doors finally opened for our grand opening, we were flooded with so much love. We would have never thought, especially after how low things had gotten. By sharing our story of our break-ins and our lawsuits with the city, the community helped us get through the hard times and allowed us to have a very strong grand opening. So, here's the thing, and this part I really want to be clear about. It wasn't just me and Jafar who made Toasted happen. It was built by our families, friends, and the community who believed in us before they even tried their first bagel sandwich. We pushed through because we had no other option we were willing to accept. We knew that the only way to fail was to stop. So, we didn't stop.

[00:07:34]So, here's your tip for lesson four.

[00:07:36]Find your person before you start. Not a mentor, not an investor, someone you can lean on when things get tough. If you're going solo, try and build that support system intentionally before things get bad because when they do, it'll be much harder to find them. So, that's the real cost of opening a small business. Not the number, but the version of yourself you have to become to get through it.

[00:07:57]We're almost 4 years into building Toasted now. 2 years in business. And I'll be honest with you, the hard parts definitely did not stop. The journey has been wild in ways that I still don't have any words for sometimes. For example, Miles joined us shortly after we opened our Youth District location and he's one of the co-founders now.

[00:08:15]Those are the things that we never expected to happen, but it does when you keep going. We've learned a lot and there's still a lot more that we don't know. And that's kind of the point of this whole channel. If you want to follow along in real time, you can check out our Instagram and Tik Tok. links are below or just stick around here and we'll take you into our lives as we keep building this thing. Don't forget to subscribe and we would love to know what kind of content you would like to see taking you guys behind the scenes of building toasted around the world. Take care.

[00:08:43]>> Okay. May I ask one of you guys back by any chance?

[00:08:46]>> No. Yeah, of course. Honestly, we we don't necessarily see a benefit from the magazine.

[00:08:52]>> Okay. You don't see a benefit? Okay.

[00:08:54]>> Yeah.

[00:08:55]So if you Okay. All right. No worries.

[00:08:59]Thank you.

[00:08:59]>> Yeah, of course. Take care. I was just honest.