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Ask most café, pub or restaurant owners what they sell and you'll get a straightforward answer. Coffee. Food. Drinks. A meal out. It seems obvious, and in a narrow sense it's true. You do sell those things. But if food and drink were the whole story, you'd have a problem, because your customers have other options that are cheaper, faster and more convenient than anything you can offer. A supermarket meal deal costs a few pounds. A home-cooked dinner, even a fancy one, comes i

In the P&L post I published recently, I made a point about labour costs that I want to come back to. I said that every owner-operator should include their own salary in the labour line of the P&L. I also said that many don't pay themselves a proper salary at all, and that I think that's a mistake. This is the longer version of why. The pattern I keep seeing Most owner-operators I've worked with, particularly those running smaller independent cafés, pubs and restaurants, don't

If you run a café, pub or restaurant and you don't have a clear picture of your profit and loss, you're flying blind. The P&L is the tool I come back to more than any other. Whether I'm building a business case for a new operation or analysing an existing one to understand where the problems are, it's where I start. In my experience, it's where most operators should start too, but many don't, because the whole thing feels intimidating. It doesn't need to be. Real P&L accounts