Café break-even and profit calculator

How many customers a day you need to cover rent, wages and everything else, and what you keep at the number you expect. GST, food cost and card fees come out properly, so the answer is one you can plan around.

Free, no sign-upRuns in your browserChecked 28 October 2026

Start from a typical café

Pick the nearest, then change anything you know.

Your monthly costs

What you pay each month however busy you are. Leave out GST if you're registered for it.

Total$26,300
Include your share of outgoings. Paying weekly? Multiply by 4.33.
$
Your usual roster, including super. Work it out
$
Leave it in, or break-even means working for nothing.
$
Bank loan or equipment finance. $0 if none.
$
Power, gas, water, insurance, software, accountant, repairs.
$

Your sales

Total takings ÷ number of sales, GST included$
Ingredients and packaging. Most cafés are between 30% and 40%.%
days
More options1.6% card fees, registered for GST.
As a share of takings. Surcharges are banned from 1 October 2026, so this is yours. Square charges 1.6% in person.
%
You must be once turnover reaches $75,000 a year, which almost every café does.
Coffee, hot food and anything eaten in all include GST. For most cafés this is 0%.
%

Customers a day to break even

126

At $14.00 each, open 6 days a week. That's $1,759 a day, or $45,746 a month.

At 160 customers a day

Takings a month$58,240
Less GST−$5,295
Less food and drink−$18,531
Less card fees−$932
Less your monthly costs−$26,300
Profit a month$7,183
Or how many you expect

Profit or loss a month, by customers a day

Below the line you're paying to open the doors. Every customer past break-even is profit.

Profit or loss a month−$40k−$20k$0$20k$40k050100150200250300Customers a dayBreak-even 126You 160

Each extra customer a day adds about $209 a month. At 160 a day that’s $86,192 a year before income tax.

How to use it

  1. 01Your monthly costs
    Rent, your usual roster with super, loan repayments and everything else in one figure. Put your own pay in too, or break-even means working for nothing. The wage calculator works out a roster.
  2. 02Then your sales
    What a customer spends on average, GST included, the share of sales that goes on food and drink, and the days you open. Card fees and GST are under More options.
  3. 03Then your customers
    Slide to the customers a day you expect, or are getting now, to see the month's profit or loss and where it sits on the chart.

How to read the answer

The default is a 40-seat café trading six days a week. Its fixed costs are $26,300 a month: $5,500 rent, $14,000 staff wages, $4,000 for the owner, and $2,800 for everything else: power, water, insurance, software and the rest.

Each $14 sale, worked through
Customer pays, GST included
$14.00
Less GST (one eleventh)
−$1.27
Less food and drink (35% of $12.73)
−$4.45
Less card fees (1.6% of $14)
−$0.22
Left towards fixed costs$8.05

That's about 57.5c in every dollar through the till.

From fixed costs to customers a day
Fixed costs a month
$26,300
Divided by 57.5c in the dollar
$45,746 a month
Trading days a month (6 × 52 ÷ 12)
26
Takings a day
$1,759
Customers a day at $14126

At 160 customers a day the café takes $58,240 a month. Take out $5,295 of GST, $18,531 of food and drink, $932 of card fees and the $26,300 of fixed costs, and it makes $7,183 a month before income tax, on top of the owner's $4,000.

Why GST and card fees matter here

Forget GST and the same café appears to break even at about 114 customers a day instead of 126. Twelve customers a day is the difference between a plan that works and one that quietly loses money. If you're registered for GST, which you must be once turnover reaches $75,000 a year, one eleventh of every taxable sale goes to the ATO. In a café that is nearly everything: coffee, hot food and anything eaten on the premises.

Card fees used to be passed on with a surcharge. Since 1 October 2026 that is banned for eftpos, Visa, Mastercard and American Express, so the fee is yours. On $58,240 a month, every 0.1% of fee is about $58. It's worth asking your provider what rate you're on. Our post on the card surcharge ban has the detail.

Where the default figures come from

  • Food and drink cost, 35%: inside the ATO's coffee shop benchmarks, which run from 33% to 42% of turnover depending on size (2023-24 tax returns).
  • Card fees, 1.6%: Square's published rate for in-person card payments. Bank and other plans differ, and larger cafés can often negotiate lower.
  • Average spend, $14: Square's data put the average coffee-only transaction at $8.04 in 2025. $14 assumes many customers add food. Use your own POS figure as soon as you have one.
  • Rent and bills: Square's 2026 guide puts small to medium café rents at $800 to $2,000 a week, and utilities plus waste, pest control and cleaning at $1,800 to $4,000 a month. Insurance of $2,000 to $5,000 a year is about $170 to $420 a month.
  • Wages, $14,000 a month: roughly what a small core team costs. The national minimum wage is $26.44 an hour from 1 July 2026, most café roles pay more under the award, and super is 12% on top. Use your real roster.

Frequently asked questions

It depends on your fixed costs and average spend, which is why a calculator beats a rule of thumb. As an example, a 40-seat café with $26,300 a month of fixed costs (including $4,000 for the owner), a $14 average spend, 35% food and drink cost and 1.6% card fees, trading six days, needs about 126 customers a day. Halve the rent or raise the average spend and that number falls quickly.
The ATO's small business benchmarks for coffee shops (2023-24 tax returns) show cost of sales of 34% to 42% of turnover for businesses turning over $65,000 to $250,000, 35% to 41% for $250,001 to $600,000, and 33% to 38% above $600,000. Coffee on its own usually costs far less than that as a share of its price, and food more, so your menu mix moves the number.
Because one eleventh of every taxable sale is GST that you pass to the ATO. If a customer pays $14, about $1.27 of it was never yours. Work out break-even on the full menu price and you understate the sales you need: in the example on this page, by about 12 customers a day. Coffee, anything eaten in and hot food are taxable; some cold takeaway food is GST-free.
Not any more. Since 1 October 2026, Australian businesses can't add a surcharge for payments on eftpos, Visa, Mastercard or American Express cards. Card fees are now a cost of doing business, which is why they're in the calculation. Weekend and public holiday surcharges are still allowed if they apply to everyone and are shown clearly before people order.
For most cafés, treat the core roster as fixed: you pay the barista whether ten people come in or a hundred. That is how this calculator works. If you add a shift every time trade picks up, run the calculator again with the busier roster to see the new break-even.
There's no reliable average, and anyone quoting one is guessing about your café. Some cafés cover their monthly costs within months; paying back the money spent opening takes much longer, often a few years. What you can control is knowing your break-even number before you open and tracking customers a day against it from the first week.

General information, not financial or tax advice. The result is only as good as the figures you put in, and real cafés have seasonal swings, quiet weeks and one-off costs this simple model leaves out. Talk to an accountant before you rely on it to sign a lease or borrow money.

Sources for the default figures

9 sources, 6 official

  1. 1ATO: Small business benchmarks, coffee shopsato.gov.au · official source
  2. 2ATO: Taxable food (GST and food)ato.gov.au · official source
  3. 3ATO: Registering for GSTato.gov.au · official source
  4. 4ACCC: Card surchargesaccc.gov.au · official source
  5. 5Reserve Bank of Australia: Merchant card payment costs and surcharging, conclusions (March 2026)rba.gov.au · official source
  6. 6business.gov.au: Changes for businesses from 1 July 2026 (minimum wage)business.gov.au · official source
  7. 7Square AU: Processing feessquareup.com
  8. 8Square AU: How much does it cost to open a café in Australia? (June 2026)squareup.com
Show all 9 sources
  1. 9Square data on Australian coffee sales in 2025, via CFOtech (October 2026)cfotech.com.au

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