i started a cafe in my 20s. this is what our worst month looked like.

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]It was the hottest week UK had seen in years. Schools were off, Arnold was packed, and [music] we run a cafe. This should have been the best month of our lives. And then, this happened. No coffee for days [music] in a cafe. Two engineers came out, two, and still couldn't fix it. I'm going to show you every single expense from that month.

[00:00:19]Every penny in, every penny [music] out.

[00:00:20]And at the end, I will show you what three people exactly walked out with after running a full cafe for 31 [music] days. Trust me, you won't see it coming.

[00:00:29]So, a bit of context. This is Paradise Cafe in Arnold, Nottingham. We are three partners [music] in this business. We opened a bit more than a year ago. It's coming up to two years now. So, right now, we know what we're doing. [music] And this month of the year, on the paper, it looked perfect. Well, at least that's what we thought anyways. It's summer. It's the hottest week in the UK history. School's off, families out, people want food and drinks, and somewhere [music] to sit. What could go wrong? We were busy. I mean, genuinely busy. And I remember thinking, this [music] is it. This is the month.

[00:01:00]Yeah. So, let's start with the numbers anyways. I have my little notebook here.

[00:01:04]I keep track of everything. Now, let's start with the money that's coming in.

[00:01:08]So, on May, our taking was 23,500 lb. Yeah, it sounds funny to me. It might sound like a big [music] number to you, but this cafe generally makes between 25,000 to 35,000. That is the bracket, and that's how much we make every month. [music] Well, it depends.

[00:01:24]It could be in the higher end, in the lower end, but in May, it was worse [music] than ever. I didn't have a month like this since we opened. You might think 23,500 lb in a small cafe in Nottingham sounds good. Let's [music] talk about where all went, then you can decide. First up is the wages. I have a team, and paying them properly isn't an option. That's not a complaint, by the way. That's what it's like to run [music] a business in the UK. Every month, no matter what, this goes out first, before the rent, before the suppliers, before anything.

[00:01:54]Team gets paid, as it should be. And that number is £11,000 for that month.

[00:01:59]Just so you know, that number does include me as well. So, you keep that in mind. Now, we come on to the juicy bits.

[00:02:05]We got rent [music] and business rates.

[00:02:07]Before I move on and show you the numbers, I have some few papers here.

[00:02:10]Because we were paying too much money towards the business rates, I couldn't get through to them. The best option was to cancel the direct debits. I cancelled the direct debit, they took us to the court, and we ended up negotiating [music] a deal. Because, I'll be honest, it's too much amounts of money that we are paying. And it was just too much, and I will show you everything. So, I'll follow the portal information, but this is [music] last year's business rate.

[00:02:32]You can pause it and have a read. Our business rate for last year, in total, was £15,843.

[00:02:39]That's for the whole year, because we run this cafe. [music] And how they do it is they come measure your shop, and they give you a rentable value. They [music] times that with the number they have, which is 55p, and you get your [music] business rates.

[00:02:51]Of course, they have some relief schemes. With the relief scheme, that was 6,000. Our business rate came up to £9,505.

[00:02:59]We made a payment towards the business rate, which [music] was 6 grand. And for last year, we still owe £3,558.

[00:03:06]You keep that number in mind. Then, of course, we have this year. And for this year, this is our business rate. As you can see, somehow it went up. Even though business multiplier is smaller, it is 48p, but we still ended up paying more money. So, the business rate is gone down, but they cut off the relief schemes, so we ended up paying more. If that makes sense. Remember, it was 9,500, now this year is 10,900.

[00:03:30]So, I got 10,900 to pay 3,500. It's just a lot of money. Altogether, with all that thing, we made a payment plan. And that payment [music] plan is I'll show you that as well, so you can get an idea. They made a payment plan of 1,600 every month. This is what we have to pay on top of our rent. And with my rent and business rates, the second biggest expense is £3,849. [music] This is all together that goes out every single month from now on, and you know I'm going to pay this number, [music] and it's not going to change. What do you think about this? I think it's too much, and the way they've done it is just doesn't make sense for small businesses. [music] It's too much, and it's just half of my rent. Anyways, you'll be the judge because if I start talking, I'll get demonetized. Then, of course, I have the food and stock. I do have a payslip from the cash and carry, so you can get an idea as well. I will cover the information. Here it is. This is what an invoice looks like from a cash and carry, as you can see. As we do have a balance with them. Let's say this week I buy a thing, then next week when [music] I make an order, I pay that off, so I got the new orders payment still pending, which at the end of next week.

[00:04:36]So, [music] I buy it, I sell it, then I pay it, if that makes sense. And yeah, that that is an invoice, and you can see how expensive [music] the things are.

[00:04:42]It's Since I opened, it just goes up every single month, but because of the business was low this month, I only spent £5,000 [music] on stock. And you know, everything on the menu has to be bought first, like the egg, bread, milk, so on and so forth, coffee beans, everything, [music] everything, salt, pepper, sauces, you name it, you buy it. Then, next on the list is the card fees. And before I tell you how much I pay towards the card fees, the only good thing that happened this month is this thing. You know, I'm with SumUp, and I work with Koye, which she helps me out with these stuff, and this is not an ad, by the way. He hooked me up with a new system because when someone pays with a card, this is the tiny screen they see, and most of my customers are elderly. So, now I got a new system, which I'm going to upgrade, and I think it's going to be a much better one because this one has a screen at the front. This is a new thing that they just released. [music] We're going to set this up and get it working for tomorrow, and it will be a pleasant experience for my customers.

[00:05:36]And it's new bit of technology, who doesn't like it? That is off. And you know, even though my rate is good because Koye got me a nice rate. Before then, what it was, I pay half of that money now for wise [music] to pay. Even though when someone makes a card transaction, instead of me getting paid, someone else gets paid. So, just keep in that mind when you go to a small business. You didn't hear this from me, but try to use cash. Cash is is always the king, as you would imagine. So, if you need a card machine or register or anything and you need a good rate, make sure you go to the link in my description, because Koya is going to help you out and he's going to get you the best deal there is possible. Who doesn't like unboxing things? [music] Yeah, much more compact.

[00:06:16]How do I get this on here?

[00:06:18]It's magnetic. I think it should be the same connectors, but let's plug this in and let's see how it is with the new system. Okay, the new system is up and running, as you can see, it's still compact. It's better than this tiny screen. We do have the handheld systems as well. And to be honest, it was an easy setup. I just plugged it in, logged in and that's it. So, let's say someone wants to buy two pancake and Nutella, then I press card on the machine. As you can see, now it's a big screen, [music] they can tap it any anywhere they want.

[00:06:44]I think here.

[00:06:45]See how my customers will react tomorrow, but I think they're going to enjoy this one. And with saying that, [music] my card fees for that month was 150 pounds, thanks to Koya. He got me the best deal possible and he sends me free things like this as well. You're watching, thank you, bro. And now, we have the unexpected cost, the biggest cost of it all, my coffee machine. If you didn't know, this is La Marzocco [music] coffee machine and I have a Malkon grinder. It was a time for it to get a service done and it had a minor leak underneath the coffee machine. So, every morning when we used to come, there used to be some water on the counter top. I didn't mind it too much, because it was so little. I thought when we get it serviced, we should get that fixed as well, because it wasn't such a big deal and it didn't do anything with the machine, so machine was in perfect working order. Long story short, I called an engineer to come and fix this.

[00:07:32]So, first engineer, he came in, he looked at the machine, he serviced it first. [music] He saw the two leaks that was on the machine. He said one of the leaks was coming from the world and he said the other leak was coming from the top. I do have videos of it as well. I will let him explain anyways.

[00:07:46]>> You got another leak here as well.

[00:07:49]That one's easily solved.

[00:07:52]It's leaking around the bottom there.

[00:07:54]So, that one.

[00:07:57]But, this is >> I don't know what's that.

[00:07:59]>> You see it? Yeah, you look at that.

[00:08:02]You haven't noticed that. It's not like there's loads of steam coming out the machine.

[00:08:05]>> No.

[00:08:06]>> So, that's been leaking very gradually.

[00:08:09]>> Yeah.

[00:08:09]>> For a long time.

[00:08:10]>> He fixed the leak on the top. It was just a minor [music] fix, and for that bottom fix, he failed our machine. There is a national thing that system they log it on, and he failed our coffee machine on that system, which is really bad because then that means people official people have to come and examine the machine. This this that was a such a long thing. It was a headache. But, anyways, we kept using the [music] machine even though he put a stick on saying do not use, but the machine was working as usual because it was the same thing, but he serviced it. Everything was good anyways. It was just failed on the paper. Then, when we were using it, the machine just kept blowing up. Steam steam coming from here. I will show you.

[00:08:43]This is inside the coffee machine. So, when steam boiler gets too hot [music] from this hole, you get steam so the machine doesn't explode. We had a lot of steam. I had to turn the machine off. We couldn't use it. That's it. The machine was gone. And for the next 4 days, we didn't have [snorts] any coffee in the shop, which, as you can see from the revenue, it affected us so badly.

[00:09:04]Then, someone from La Marzocco came. He said the leak wasn't from the weld. He has to order another part for the machine's brain [music] cuz the machine for pressure was getting too much, and it wanted to release some steam from it from itself. But, however, there was nothing wrong with the machine. So, yeah, we had to wait for that as well to get that fixed, wait for another parts, this this that. And in total, that cost us 1,250 lb and 4 days and thousands lost in revenue. I mean, when I shared this on my previous videos, people said get one more coffee machine, but the [music] things it doesn't work like that because even when I get a coffee machine, if this one goes out, I have to I have to call someone in to pick it up, plug the new things in for me because there's a water coming from the underneath, and it doesn't work with your normal wall socket plug. It has an industrial plug.

[00:09:50]Renting, hiring a machine, it doesn't happen in the same day. Buying one, too expensive. And this machine cost me nearly 15,000 lb. It should So, it should be reliable. It should work. It should do what it needs to do, and just give me espressos all day long. But, it was just a thing that we experienced.

[00:10:06]And [music] when you run a business, you do you experience things like this, and it cost us a lot of money, a lot of stress, and a lot of headaches. Then, of course, even though [music] coffee machines runs or not, the machines are on higher purchase installments. What does that mean? That means I have to pay money every [music] single month towards the finance company until it finishes.

[00:10:25]And that number is 600 [music] lb every month. Hopefully, it's going to finish in the beginning of next year, so I'm going to get rid of the 600 lb, but that's something I have to pay if [music] the machine breaks down or not.

[00:10:37]And as you're seeing it, it does break down. What can you do? It could have been worse. And we've got the bills.

[00:10:41][music] We've got the electric. We only have electric in here. We don't have gas. We've got things like internet, water, and stuff like that. And in total, that number is 1,000 lb. This number, it does go up, but it never goes down. That's the thing. [music] Sometimes, it goes down, but, you know, it's summer, it's hot, so I have to turn on the air con. We [music] do have two more fans in the kitchen as well. And these are all the expenses to run Paradise Cafe. And in total, this number comes up to 22,849 lb. And that is the expenses for the [music] whole month. Even if a customer walks in or doesn't, this is what I have to pay every month. Well, of course, it differs [music] from month to month, but this is the expenses that we have to pay. And for that month, my cafe generated 23,500 lb. It was a terrible month. Although we were busy cuz of the coffee machine going like that, we didn't make that much amount of money. And when you [music] take out all my expenses from the sales, we made a profit of, get ready, 651 pounds. And that was the profit to run this cafe for 31 days, day and night, coming here every day, managing the stock, managing the staff, managing waste, managing things like broken coffee machines, and all the things that we had to do in this cafe. Some months we make more profit, but [music] then you have months like this here and there. It doesn't happen all the time, but you do get months like this as well.

[00:12:04]And I told you we are three partners in this business, so that's not the profit I take home.

[00:12:09]From that big amount of money, what I took [music] home is 217 pounds from that number and from that month. I'll be straight with you. This is the part of owning a business where nobody shows you. Everyone shows you the busy cafe, the good reviews, the food going out, people making coffee, and earning loads of money, but nobody shows you this.

[00:12:29]We are still open tomorrow, and I will be here tomorrow as well. That's if the coffee machine works.

[00:12:35]So, I hope you enjoyed this video. Well, if you did, make sure you go watch this video because YouTube wants you to watch that next, and I will see you guys on the next one.

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