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It's only 40 cents a cup! It's better to work than to sell coffee!

Published: 2026-04-06 Author:

Last Updated: 2026/04/06, ▲ Click to follow | Daily boutique Coffee Culture Magazine Coffee Workshop Coffee Industry in recent years, many young people with entrepreneurial dreams are fascinated by the dream of owning a dream coffee shop, which can not only make money but also meet poetry and distant ideals. But the coffee shop is like a besieged city, crowded by people outside the city.

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The popularity of the coffee industry in recent years has fascinated many young people with entrepreneurial dreams, looking forward to owning a dream coffee shop, which can not only make money but also meet the ideals of poetry and afar. But the coffee shop is like a besieged city, people outside the city are trying to get in, while people in the city are complaining and trying to escape from the city.

Recently, the owner of a cafe in Australia met a netizen for help and asked her if she was making money to open a cafe in Australia. The first piece of advice that the shopkeeper asked for help was that it was not easy to run a coffee shop and that it was necessary to sell enough coffee to make money.

In order to make his suggestion more convincing, the shopkeeper calculated an account for netizens to intuitively explain how much money he could make by selling a cup of coffee.

First of all, every A $4.80 takeaway coffee sold must be handed over to the government to pay a consumption tax of 45 Australian cents. Second, the cost of coffee beans, milk and packing cups needed to make coffee is about A $1.30. In addition, after deducting the above-mentioned costs, about 40% (A $1.92) of the remaining money needs to be used to pay employees' wages and pensions, which fluctuates when business is bad and turnover is low. The proportion of wages will increase.

Of the remaining money, 10% (45 Australian cents) was used to pay the store rent, and 10% was used to pay for electricity, insurance, repairs and maintenance, etc., and in the end, the profit from selling coffee was only 40 Australian cents, which means that a cup of coffee actually has a profit of only 40 cents!

These are the profits of the coffee shop when the business situation is relatively optimistic. The owner said that if the turnover is bleak, the actual profit will be greatly reduced. Therefore, if you want to earn the average Australian wage by selling coffee, you have to sell at least 700 cups, without deducting personal income tax.

In Australia, it is not only coffee shops, but also other small business owners are facing a similar situation. Some netizens said that after a girl started a small business, she had to focus on production progress, delivery and unloading, publicity and promotion, and was forced to learn to drive a forklift. Hard work but feel that their own efforts and returns are not proportional. Netizens in the ice cream cart business also admitted that their small business was losing money from the beginning, and was finally decided to shut down more than two months later.

Small bosses are exhausted and say bluntly that it is difficult to run a small business in such an environment, and they are so busy day by day that they may end up earning less than their own employees. "it's better to go out and work in this way."

Time is flexible and free to own a small shop, and living a simple life of self-sufficiency may be what small owners dream of at the beginning of opening a shop, but in fact, they find that there is no so-called free poetry and distance to open a shop. There is only a place full of bits and pieces and the anxiety and worry of not making money.

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