How to Open a Cafe: Lessons From Two Perth Owners

To open a cafe, prove that people will buy what you make, plan around real numbers, understand the lease, get council approvals in order, appoint a food safety supervisor and build systems for your busiest morning. This guide covers starting a cafe in Western Australia step by step, with the rules linked to official sources. Outside WA, the free ABLIS tool lists the licences and council approvals for your business. For the dollar figures, see our episode on the real cost of opening a cafe.

The lessons come from two Perth owners. Simone Sichel opened his first Cup & Co in 2015 and now runs cafes in Floreat and Claremont. He spoke to host Paul Cohalan on episode 18. Nadia Nesevski started Cookie Loaded in her family's kitchen at 18 and opened a shop in Mount Hawthorn at 20, as she told Paul on episode 24. Hers is a cookie shop, not a cafe, but opening it meant many of the same hurdles: a long lease, a fit out and a chaotic first week.

Simone's answer to anyone who wants to open a cafe is blunt. Before he could finish it, Paul said "Don't", and Simone agreed: "I'm telling you, don't." As things stand, he says, "It's not worth the investment", and even a cafe that gets everything right may not make money. So step 1 is deciding whether to open one at all, and walking away is a fair outcome.

How to open a cafe

1. Decide whether you should open a cafe at all
2. Prove the product before you sign a lease
3. Write a cafe business plan that survives the numbers
4. Choose the location and read the lease before you sign
5. Get your approvals in the right order
6. Appoint a food safety supervisor and train your staff
7. Fit out, equip and test before opening day
8. Build systems for your busiest morning

1. Decide whether you should open a cafe at all

Be honest about two things: how much hospitality experience you are bringing, and how you would cope with a run of weeks that make no money.

Simone puts experience first. An apprentice plumber, he points out, spends years learning before doing important jobs, and years more before working alone. Then he turns it on anyone planning a cafe:

If tomorrow morning you decide to open a cafe, where's your five, six years of experience?

He also thinks the margins have changed. Fifteen years ago, he says, you could make mistakes for a week, earn nothing and still break even. Now, by his estimate, a cafe doing table service without alcohol works on margins of about five to six per cent. As for why people open cafes anyway:

Hospitality people are not business people.

He counts himself in that: "if I bring my numbers to any kind of business people, they will tell me you're nuts." If you have never worked in a cafe, the cheapest fix is to work in one, ideally for an owner who will show you the numbers. Simone is happy to teach people who ask, but "it's not going to take five minutes."

2. Prove the product before you sign a lease

Sell what you plan to sell, at a small scale, before you commit to rent.

Nadia was selling from home before she took on a shop. In 2021, at 18, she wanted a loaded dessert and, as she saw it, nowhere in Perth was making one.

So I made it myself and then I posted it on Instagram and everyone was like, where's this from? And I was like, I made it. And then I was like, maybe I should just start selling cookies from home.

For two years, until the shop opened, Cookie Loaded ran from the family kitchen as an online gift box business, on a small oven and a KitchenAid that made 20 cookies a batch. Market stalls in Scarborough meant "we had to prep two days beforehand", and she says they sold out. She signed a lease at 19, before those two years were up. She had wanted a shop from the start, for a clear reason:

From when I opened the business, I was like, okay, there's two options for growth. You either grow online or it's easier and faster to grow with a shop.

Some of those market customers still come in now. This is also the realistic way to start on a low budget: you learn whether people will pay before the rent starts. Before you sell from home, check the rules. WA Health says a home based food business must still register with or notify its council, and the kitchen has to meet the national food premises standard. If yours can't, the work has to move to commercial premises.

3. Write a cafe business plan that survives the numbers

Build the plan from your own figures, then run it twice: once on the trade you expect and once on a slow year.

Start with six inputs, using real quotes and a real roster wherever you can:

• Customers and spend. How many people you expect each day, and what the average customer spends.
• Hours and staff. Your opening hours and the roster needed to cover them, weekends included.
• Product and waste. What each menu item costs to make, and how much you expect to throw out.
• Premises. Rent and outgoings from the lease, plus insurance and power.
• Your own income. What you need to live on. Count it even if the business can't pay you for a while.
• Cash in reserve. How many months you can pay the bills if takings fall short.

Then check the totals against Simone's experience. By his reckoning wages take about 45 per cent of revenue and product about 30, which leaves a quarter for rent, insurance, power and everything else. If your plan comes out much better than that, find out why before you rely on it. He goes through the rest of the bills on episode 18.

Now run the slow year:

• Runway. Simone reckons a new cafe here takes about a year to build its repeat customers, and he is frank about the rest: "Sometimes it just doesn't work." Put fewer customers through the same rent and roster, and see whether your reserve lasts the year with your own income still in it.
• Payback. Paul's question to Nadia applies to any shop: "how many cookies you got to sell just to pay back the fit out". For a cafe, work it out in coffees and plates, using what each one leaves after every bill is paid, not what it brings in. On the five to six per cent margins Simone describes, that is five or six cents in each dollar.
• Prices that move. Nadia says staff wages eat into her profit most. When wages and ingredients rise, her prices have to follow, but only so far: "we can't increase it too much because then it will turn customers away." Plan for costs that rise faster than you can lift prices.

If the plan only works in the expected year, change the plan or don't open. Simone has never been afraid to try things, and he says that has cost him a lot:

Sometimes I really would prefer to have a little bit more conservative mindset because it would have saved me a lot of trouble. A lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of mistakes.

4. Choose the location and read the lease before you sign

Pick a site that suits the customers you found in step 2, check with the council that a cafe can operate there, and don't sign until you understand every term.

A site does not have to suit your taste. Paul asked Simone how old school cafes with a bain marie and no big fit out keep going:

Maybe it's not my personal preference or your personal preference, but if it works in a way that you hit the right market and they got a lease locked in five years at a price, fine.

He added that owners who work in the business themselves can make it work. A lease locked in at the right price helps too, but it is easy to sign one you don't understand. Nadia signed for seven years:

I was young. I was very naive. I didn't know anything about leases.

She never thought it would fail, but she knows what she took on: "Seven years to sign at a young age, not knowing which way your business can go." Getting the keys took a year of back and forth with the shopping centre. In a centre, she found, the rent is higher and the terms are stricter. Four years in, she likes the length: a four year lease would be ending now.

Before you sign a lease in WA:

• Most retail shop leases come under the Commercial Tenancy (Retail Shops) Agreements Act 1985. The landlord must give you a disclosure statement at least seven days before you enter into the lease, with the proposed lease, the tenant guide and the operating expenses budget attached. Read all of it. A signed offer or agreement to lease can count as entering into the lease, so those seven days need to pass before you sign anything binding.
• The Small Business Development Corporation gives free advice on retail leases on 133 140, and recommends independent legal, financial and business advice before you sign, pay any money or move in.
• Ask the council whether the site needs planning approval to be used as a cafe.

5. Get your approvals in the right order

Some approvals have to come before others. Planning and building approvals come before the fit out starts, and food registration before you open. In WA the main one is a registration, not a licence: you register the food business with your council. A liquor licence only comes into it if you sell alcohol. Outside WA the agencies and steps differ, so check ABLIS and your local council.

The City of Vincent's food business guide shows how it runs at one Perth council. Planning and building approvals come first. Then you send the registration form in one package with your menu, floor plans, staff training certificates and, if you need one, your food safety supervisor's certificate. The council issues a conditional approval to build the fit out to those plans, and a final inspection comes before the certificate. So start step 6 while the approvals are under way, not after. Other councils differ in the detail. If the premises had a different use before, ask the council whether you also need a new occupancy permit. The SBDC's free Business Licence Finder lists what applies to your business and location.

For alcohol, a restaurant licence allows it only to seated customers having a meal, and serving drinks without a meal needs a separate permit. A new application needs a Management of Licensed Premises certificate, and you must have, or be about to have, exclusive tenure of the premises. Your council's certificates can follow after you lodge, though the application usually cannot be decided until they arrive. Once you trade, a manager with an approved manager card must be on site whenever you are open, and anyone who serves alcohol needs the Responsible Service of Alcohol course, within 28 days of starting if they have not done it already.

6. Appoint a food safety supervisor and train your staff

Before you serve anyone, appoint a certified food safety supervisor and make sure everyone who handles food has been trained or has equivalent skills.

This is Standard 3.2.2A of the Food Standards Code, which took effect on 8 December 2023. It is about potentially hazardous food: food that has to be kept cold or hot to stay safe, such as meat, egg dishes, dairy and cooked rice. Food Standards Australia New Zealand puts a caterer or food service business in category one if it turns unpackaged, potentially hazardous food into food that is ready to eat and still potentially hazardous, then serves it to the consumer. WA Health lists cafes among its examples. Category one needs all three:

• A food safety supervisor with a certificate from a registered training organisation, obtained in the past five years. They must be reasonably available to advise and supervise staff, which Food Standards Australia New Zealand defines as working on site or being easy to contact. The same guidance says it isn't reasonable to appoint someone who doesn't regularly handle food as part of their job, or is never on site. WA Health suggests someone like your chef or cook. In WA the course covers the units SITXFSA005 and SITXFSA006 (the SITSS00069 skill set) or an equivalent WA Health accepts.
• Food handler training in safe handling, contamination, cleaning and sanitising, and personal hygiene, for anyone who handles unpackaged, potentially hazardous food. Staff need the training or equivalent skills before they start, not necessarily a certificate.
• Evidence that your critical food safety controls are working, such as temperatures when food arrives, is stored and is cooled, and cleaning and sanitising. The default is written records, kept for three months. Records aren't required if you can show your council's environmental health officer another way that you meet the rules, but the officer can require them if you can't.

Category two is for retailers that sell ready to eat, potentially hazardous food they handle unpackaged but don't make or process, apart from slicing, weighing, repacking, reheating or hot holding. They need the first two. Most cafes with a kitchen will be category one, but confirm it with your council. Neither Simone nor Nadia covered this on the show, so this step rests on the regulators' guidance.

7. Fit out, equip and test before opening day

Allow more time than the builder quotes, choose your equipment before the plans are drawn, and cook the full menu in the new space before the public arrives.

After the keys, Nadia's fit out took about six months more, over Christmas and New Year when a lot of trades are off. She says the finished shop looked nothing like the renders she was promised.

It was a big step going from a home kitchen to actually running a store. I had no idea how to run a store at the start. It was a lot to learn.

The new oven threw her recipe off: "our recipe as well wasn't turning out right because we have a different oven." Two days before opening, the glass on the ice cream machine cracked, and the shop nearly flooded when the ice machine broke. Two lessons carry over to any cafe:

• Equipment shapes the plans. Talking about a second shop, Nadia pointed out what baking on site involves: "to bake with the specific oven we have, we need a grease trap." Pick the coffee machine, oven and fridges before the plans go to council, not after.
• The space behind the counter is costly to change once it is built. Hers is small: "We can't have a lot of people working because we bump into each other." Design the working area for your busiest shift.

Then run a practice service on the real equipment, and keep money back for whatever breaks in opening week.

8. Build systems for your busiest morning

Running a cafe day to day is mostly systems: a short menu, clear roles and a fast way to fix mistakes, all designed for the busiest hour rather than the quiet one.

Nadia opened in January 2023 to a queue, and the shop was not ready for it:

We kept selling out. The processes, the systems weren't there. So it was like chaos.

They sold out every day of the first week.

Simone works at a scale where systems are the business. On a normal Saturday, he says, they cook about 250 breakfasts alongside roughly 500 coffees. At 90 per cent accuracy, 25 people would get the wrong meal, and he says that would send him broke in three weeks. He puts their accuracy at 98.9 to 99 per cent, and at peak the aim is under 15 minutes from the moment you pay.

Start by narrowing what you sell. Simone's advice:

Do it as best as you can. Don't pretend to do a little bit of everything.

Try to do a little bit of everything, he says, and "It's gonna fall into average."

The rest is people. Plenty of places make good coffee now, Simone says, so what brings a regular back tomorrow instead of somewhere else is the person handing it over: "It's that smile." Our guide to how to build resilience at work covers how he trains staff to accept a mistake and fix it on a busy Saturday.

Both owners say the business needs its owner, even when it can run without one. Simone could hire someone to do his job, but then "how you're going to control the quality if you're not the best to do that job." Nadia says the shop could run without her, but "without the founder involved in the business, the business isn't going to go anywhere."

Buying an existing cafe instead

Buying a cafe that is already trading can save you the fit out and some of the slow first months, if the equipment is sound and included in the sale. Paul put a related idea to Simone: the cafe as a semi retirement, where you take a lease and run it yourself. "You find a good lease, it's maybe already fitted out, so you're not outlaying capital." Simone thought it could have worked 10 to 15 years ago. Now: "the problem is that with the 6 per cent margin, if this week rains, you're done."

He also says so many cafes are losing money that they are selling for very little. Ask why it is for sale, and go through the accounts and the remaining lease before you offer. If you take over the seller's lease, the landlord does not have to give you a disclosure statement or tenant guide, so the seven days in step 4 do not protect you. In WA the food business registration does not transfer with the sale. The seller should ask the council to cancel theirs, and you apply for your own.

Where to go from here

Both conversations go well beyond opening day.

• Episode 18: The Real Cost of Opening a Cafe, with Simone Sichel, on wages, power bills and the margins behind every coffee.
• Episode 24: From a Home Kitchen to Cookie Loaded, with Nadia Nesevski, on two years at home, a seven year lease and opening week.
• How to Build Resilience at Work: Seven Habits From Real Jobs, on hospitality hours and training staff for the busy moment.
• The Best Business Podcasts in Australia for 2026, for shows about money, markets and building a business.
• Getting Sober: 35 Years Without a Drink, and Where to Start, on staying well in an industry built around other people's nights out.