Specialty coffee economics
The real cost of a cup
Every assumption behind a real Barcelona specialty bar, adjustable. Change the rent, the volume, the food. Watch what happens to the margin on each cup.
Read the articleSelling price
€2.50
Loss per cup
−€0.53
| Item | Per cup |
|---|---|
| Coffee beans | €0.21 |
| Milk blend | €0.27 |
| Packaging | €0.07 |
| Sweeteners and syrups | €0.04 |
| Water and utilities | €0.02 |
| Waste (3%) | €0.02 |
| Fixed costs | |
| Overhead per cup | €1.94 |
| Amortisation per cup | €0.23 |
| Food and bag relief | −€1.03 |
| Loss per cup | −€0.53 |
250 g bag · sells at €11.50 · costs €8.05 · margin €2.40
Per cup
Net price
€2.27
Variable cost
€0.63
Relief
€1.03
Fixed per cup
€2.17
Margin per cup
−€0.53
Monthly EBITDA
−€1,441
Break-even
126/day
The bar this model starts from
A real specialty bar in Barcelona: sixteen seats, one barista, the owner behind the counter, specialty beans at €23/kg, 105 drinks a day, 310 days a year.
The customer pays €2.50. €0.23 of that goes straight to the taxman, so the café keeps €2.27.
Making the drink costs €0.63, and each cup carries €3.20 of fixed costs: €3.83 in total.
On coffee alone the bar loses €1.56 on every cup. It needs 205 drinks a day to cover everything — or 126 once food and retail bags carry their share.
Move any slider and every figure on this page changes with it.
How to read the model
Every figure below is net of VAT on both sides and before corporate tax. These are the six numbers that decide whether a specialty café survives.
- Net price
- What the café actually keeps from the menu price. In Spain hospitality VAT is 10%, collected on behalf of the state: it was never the café's to keep.
- Variable cost
- What one drink physically consumes: beans, milk, packaging, sweeteners, water and the share that gets wasted. It is the smallest part of the bill, and the one everyone talks about.
- Fixed cost per cup
- Rent, staff, the owner's salary, insurance, the accountant, amortisation — divided by the number of cups sold. It does not move when the café sells less, which is why volume matters more than price.
- Traspaso
- In Barcelona, what you pay the previous tenant for the right to take over a commercial space. It buys no equipment and no stock, it is amortised like any other investment, and it never appears on a menu.
- Food and bag relief
- The gross margin of pastries and retail coffee, spread across the coffees sold. It does not make coffee profitable; it pays part of the bill that coffee alone cannot.
- Break-even
- How many coffees a day cover every cost at the current price. Given twice here: on coffee alone, and with the food and retail mix the model assumes.
Questions
- How do I use this for my own café?
- Replace the four fixed costs with yours — rent, staff, your own salary and what you paid to take over the space — and set the price and the cups a day you actually sell. The ingredient costs are per drink and barely move between cities; what changes everything is rent and volume.
- Why is everything net of VAT?
- Because VAT is not the café's money on either side. It is collected from the customer for the state, and the VAT paid on beans, milk and equipment comes back through the quarterly return. Mixing gross and net is the most common way a café ends up thinking it earns more than it does.
- What is inside the fixed costs?
- Rent, one full-time barista, the owner's salary, electricity and gas, water, internet and POS, insurance, the accountant, marketing, cleaning, waste disposal, miscellaneous, the amortisation of €97,800 of equipment and key money over nine years, and a monthly provision for severance.
- Why does volume change the cost per cup so much?
- Because the fixed costs do not move. The same bill split between 30 coffees a day or 200 is €11.21 or €1.68 per cup. Every extra drink is worth more than the one before it, which is why a quiet street beats a bad espresso every time.
- Does this work outside Barcelona?
- The structure does; the numbers do not. Rent and the traspaso are what make Barcelona what it is. Put your own city's rent in and the break-even moves immediately — that is what the sliders are for.
All figures are net of VAT on both sides and before corporate tax. This is the model the article is built on.