I did feel like I was in the headmaster's office!
I do apologise for my rather brusque manner - I read my ten points to my wife, who has extensive business experience and some of the points were hers and potential dangers that she flagged up. Both of us were less than happy about the idea that you borrow money on a credit card to buy a cafe. A regular loan sounds considerably healthier, though that health must of course depend on the conditions of that loan!
As for the overall concept - I want you to be perfectly clear that what you are buying is not really a business, but a job. It is a job that requires you to enter into a rental agreement, hire aids and pay for equipment and other things - but you have to be there and you have to work there.
We have four businesses (well three-and-a-half, as one is a joint venture with someone else) and I have to work full-time in one of those and I am the only member of staff, as I build it up. So in reality, that is not (yet!) a business. It is something, a job, an investment, a hobby, a vainglorious hope for the future, whatever I care to call it; but a business, it am not!
But apart from that one venture, the other businesses occupy me not one jot. My contribution to the good order of two of those businesses is as the handyman. Customers are occasionally surprised to discover that the scruffy old bald Herbert in gunge-order that they see fixing the roof or checking the drains is the boss. As for the others, I am supposed to look at their books once a year and I have to travel there (Germany) a few times in the year and sign contracts and do similar things (mostly smile sweetly, nod vigorously and tell funny stories over dinner) but that's about the sum total of my efforts.
Businesses are made of people, not buildings or facilities in general - but people. Even steelworks that need a few million investment per employee are composed of experienced steelworkers, metallurgists and other animals. I was once attending the recording of a film score at a major London studio and I ask the studio manager what the place costs per day.
"£3,600 plus VAT and extras." she told me.
"That's nothing!" said the young woman from the agency. "The orchestra is costing us £82,000 a day!"
People, good people, cost money. I may play at being the boss around here, but I'm not the best paid! That honour (I was told) goes to the youngest member of the team - but she brings in the most profit.
My earnings, such as they are, are rather meagre and I see my task as being the acquisition of equity and not cash. The profits from one enterprise are funnelled into creating other enterprises and not into buying a new jam-jar for the gaffer, or nice toys and dresses for Mrs. Gaffer!
Bearing all that in mind, you may like to look upon going into business, not as some way of becoming rich or as a path to getting a nice car tax-free, but as a way of building something from the ground-up. They key to that, is to (a) not be the skivvy behind the counter! and (b) own the property!
My 30 cents worth would be to wait until you have 'down-sized' your living arrangements and THEN go out and BUY a cafe and not rent one! (That way, you have an obvious and fairly painless exit strategy at all times!)
_________
And as has been mentioned above by
@Gecko001,
@KAC and others, if you turn this into a real business, it's going to hit £85,000 in a heartbeat! Well, either that, or it really is a turkey - so it will be best if you base your calculations on having to charge VAT.
