I spent 20 years in hospitality before I opened my own place.
Not just in the kitchen. I'd worked almost every role hospitality had to offer. By the time I decided to go out on my own, I genuinely believed I knew this industry inside out.
I was wrong about what that meant.
The café was steady. Lovely customers. Plenty of regulars. The kind of place where people came back because they actually liked it.
But what nobody tells you, what I wish someone had told me, is that running a business and working in an industry are two completely different skills. I knew hospitality. I did not know payroll. I did not know admin. I had no idea how to manage the staffing chaos that comes with a small food business or how to protect myself legally or how to read a lease properly.
I was learning all of it in real time, while also running the business, while also raising young kids who barely saw me, while my body was accumulating the kind of injuries that 20 years of physical work quietly builds up behind your back.
We were busy. We were exhausted. We were building something but we were running so fast that there was no time to think. Only do.
By year two, I already knew I wanted out.
Not because the business was failing. Because I was.
We went through the proper channels. Got a valuation. Listed it. Used a broker. Did everything you're supposed to do.
Almost no interest. A handful of window shoppers. Nothing that went anywhere.
Then, with the end of lease approaching, we found something in the paperwork. A clause that made the business effectively impossible to transfer to a new owner.
One clause. That was it.
If you can't sell, there's no point renewing. So we closed.
Closing a business I had built felt like losing a part of me.
I want to be honest about that because I don't think people say it plainly enough. There is grief in it. Real grief.
But I'll also tell you something I didn't expect: there was relief. Enormous relief. The kind you feel when you've been running as hard as you can for years and someone finally tells you it's okay to stop.
I hadn't slept properly. I hadn't been present for my family the way I wanted to be. I hadn't had a single day where I wasn't thinking about the business every waking hour.
When it was over, I could breathe again.
Here's what I'd tell the version of me that was about to open that café:
Do a basic business course first. Not a marketing course or a branding course- a business course. Understand your numbers, your legal exposure, your lease, your structure before you sign anything.
Find someone who already owns and operates a business, ideally in the same industry and walk through your plan with them before you open. Not a mentor who talks theory. Someone who can look at your setup and tell you what you're missing.
Automate everything you possibly can from day one. Every process that depends entirely on you being physically present is a liability. Every system you build is an asset.
And read your lease like your business depends on it. Because it does.
That's why The Cynical Operator exists.
Not because I have all the answers. Because I've paid for some of them in a way I'd rather you didn't have to.
I'm not a broker. I'm not a consultant. I'm an operator who learned the hard way and decided to build something useful from what I now know.
Every week in this newsletter I'll share what I'm seeing, what I'm learning and what I wish someone had said out loud when I needed to hear it.
Just one operator talking to another.
Welcome to The Cynical Operator.
If this landed for you, forward it to one person in hospitality who needs to read it.
If any of this felt familiar, hit reply. I read every one.