Coffee Is the Product. Math Is the Business, with Trevor Corlett

Coffee is why people walk in. The math is why you’re still open in three years. Plenty of beautiful cafés with a line out the door quietly go under because the numbers underneath never worked—and the owner didn’t find out until it was too late to fix. This session is about the handful of figures that actually move the needle: your prime cost, margins, labor as a percentage of sales, cost of goods, and how pricing ties it all together. More important than knowing the metrics is reading them often enough to act—catching a soft month while you can still do something about it, and knowing which lever to pull when you do. Running multiple cafés, these are the numbers I watch every week; they tell me exactly where to push. Whether you own, manage, or are still dreaming about your first shop, you’ll leave fluent in the financial side of the business—and a lot less afraid of it.

Location: BT 2