Most café owners can tell you how many coffees went out the door on a busy Saturday morning. Far fewer can tell you what they kept. That gap is what this site exists to close.
Why this exists
Café accounting is either expensive, complicated, or both — and it usually arrives too late. A monthly P&L tells you about a problem four weeks after it started. By then the roster's been written three more times, the milk order's gone out again, and the cabinet's still being over-ordered.
What most operators actually need is something much simpler: a way to take last week's revenue and costs and see, in under two minutes, whether the café is making money and which line is out of shape. That's the whole idea behind the calculator. No signup, no trial, no upsell to a paid tier.
The calculator runs entirely in your browser. Your numbers are never sent to us, stored, or seen by anyone. Close the tab and they're gone.
Who's behind it
CaféProfitCalc is written and maintained by Terry McDonnell — the same person behind RestaurantProfitCalc.
A chartered accountant by training, he spent the early part of his career managing several manufacturing companies before moving into food. Over the years that followed he built, ran and sold seven fast food franchises, and most recently owned and operated a restaurant for nine years — selling it recently, at a healthy capital profit.
CaféProfitCalc grew out of that same background, built specifically for the numbers a café throws up that a restaurant doesn't: a high-volume, low-ticket coffee bar sitting alongside a cabinet of food that either sells today or becomes waste, and a labour cost that has to cover a short, brutal morning rush without bleeding money through a quiet afternoon. The accounting training is why every figure here is tied back to a percentage of revenue rather than a gut feel; the hospitality operating experience is why the calculator asks for the numbers you can actually lay your hands on — last week's takings, the wage run, the invoices — instead of the ones your accountant assembles a month later.
You can reach us at hello@cafeprofitcalc.com. We read everything, including the corrections.
Where the benchmark numbers come from
The benchmarks used across this site — coffee & beverage cost, food & cabinet cost, labour, prime cost and occupancy — come from figures widely used in café and coffee-shop accounting and industry reporting. You can see the full table on the calculator page.
They are ranges, not rules, and they're most useful as a first check: if one of your cost lines sits well outside its range, that's where to look first.
Two things worth saying plainly:
- These ranges vary by market. Wage floors, rent, and bean costs differ enormously between countries and between a CBD site and a suburban one. Treat the benchmarks as a starting point, not a verdict.
- They vary by concept. A coffee-forward bar doing high volume and a full-food café with an all-day cabinet menu have genuinely different cost structures — the beverage side runs far leaner than the food side, which is why we break the two out separately.
If you think one of our figures is wrong or out of date for your market, tell us. We'd rather fix it than defend it.
How the calculator works
Simple mode takes your weekly revenue and four cost percentages — food & beverage, labour, rent & occupancy, and other overheads — and returns your net margin, prime cost, and annualised figures. Detailed P&L mode breaks those down into individual line items so you can see exactly where the money's going, cost line by cost line, against its benchmark.
Both modes use the same underlying arithmetic you'd do by hand. There's no proprietary model and nothing hidden — the calculation is revenue minus costs, expressed as a percentage. The value isn't in the maths, it's in having every line laid out in one place with a benchmark next to it.
What this site is not
It's not accounting software, and it's not a substitute for an accountant. It doesn't handle tax, depreciation, loan schedules, or statutory reporting. It won't file anything for you.
The results it produces are indicative. Before you make a decision that matters — signing a lease, taking on debt, restructuring your team — take the numbers to a qualified accountant who knows your business and your jurisdiction.
How the site is funded
CaféProfitCalc is free and supported by advertising. We don't take sponsorship from POS companies, roasters, suppliers, or software vendors, and no advertiser has any say over what we publish or what the benchmarks say. If that ever changes, it'll be disclosed on this page.