The UK café and restaurant founder’s guide to costing, funding and stress-testing your opening
Before you sign the lease, know your real opening number.
For: A first-time founder in England about to open one independent café, coffee shop, bakery-café or small restaurant, who has found a site or is choosing between a few, and has not signed.
Before You Sign the Lease
An operator-written guide for first-time café and restaurant founders in England, with a source and a date on every figure. Build an itemised opening budget, twelve months of cash flow and your break-even before you commit.
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PDF and EPUB plus the Opening Numbers Workbook for £29. Full refund on request for 14 days. Start with the free sample chapter.
An operator-written guide for first-time café and restaurant founders in England. Build an itemised opening budget, twelve months of cash flow and your break-even, and know what to ask before you commit.
Work through the book with your site’s details and, in about two weekends, you will have five things you do not have now: an itemised opening budget with a source and a date on every line; a twelve-month cash flow in three scenarios; the number of customers a day you need to break even; a list of questions for your solicitor and surveyor, each with a figure next to it; and a written decision, go, renegotiate or walk, that you can show a lender, a partner, or yourself in a year’s time.
A first-time founder in England about to open one independent café, coffee shop, bakery-café or small restaurant, who has found a site or is choosing between a few, and has not signed.
Experienced operators opening their fourth site; franchisees; anyone planning to open “in five years”; dark kitchens and street food.
The book follows one illustrative founder, Dee, through the ten days an agent gives her to decide on a café. Each chapter is one or two of those days and gives you one number you did not have before. Three kinds of box run through every chapter: At the table (what the author has actually seen), Show me the working (the formula and the sources) and Do this now (the steps for your own site).
The source register (every figure, with the date it was read), the April refresh checklist, a glossary, what differs in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, when to hire which professional, and a paper version of every workbook table.
Ali Solak has spent more than twenty years in hospitality operations and leadership, running outlets across five countries. In London he led the multi-site rollout of Simit Sarayı, with sites on Oxford Street, Bond Street, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Villiers Street, Southampton Row, King’s Road and Green Lanes.
In June 2024 he founded Epicurean Digital Consultants, a London consultancy for independent cafés, restaurants and hospitality brands. It is founder-led: you work with Ali directly, not with an account manager. This is his first book.
Free sample chapter
Free
Chapter 1, with the “Read this first” panel.
The book and workbook
£29.00
The book as PDF and EPUB, the Opening Numbers Workbook, and every corrected edition free.
Resources and sources Corrections and updates The Opening Numbers Review
