The Most Overrated Skill in the Coffee Business (And What Actually Keeps Cafés Alive)

 Staying alive starts with knowing whether you’re chasing reality—or an ideal.

If you only listen to advice from within the industry, it’s easy to reach one conclusion:
To run a coffee shop, the most important thing is making great coffee.

I used to believe that wholeheartedly.

But once I actually stepped into operating a café, I slowly realized something uncomfortable:
the ability to “make good coffee” is overestimated in this business.

It matters—but it isn’t the core.

01 | It Sets the Floor, Rarely the Outcome

In a coffee shop, making good coffee functions more like a passing grade.

If you can’t reach it, the problems are obvious.
But once you do, its influence on the final business outcome drops off quickly.

I’ve seen plenty of cafés with solid skills and consistent quality
that were still operating under constant pressure.

And I’ve seen others where the coffee was simply “decent,”
yet the business survived steadily.

Because what truly creates distance between cafés
usually isn’t found in the cup.

02 | It’s a Very “Safe” Kind of Effort

Focusing on coffee itself is a low-risk choice.

As long as you’re serious and committed,
no one questions your professionalism—
you might even earn respect within the industry.

But here’s the issue:
safe effort is not always effective effort.

When most of your time is spent refining technical skills,
some of the harder—and less glamorous—decisions
get quietly postponed.

03 | The Hardest Decisions Are the Ones No One Likes to Talk About

For example:

• Can this shop actually afford its rent?

• How long will it realistically take to break even?

• How do you consistently attract new customers—and keep them coming back?

• All the “math”: margins, operating costs, measurable results

These questions rarely have standard answers.
They’re also hard to label as “professional.”

But they determine one thing very clearly:
whether the shop can keep its doors open.

That’s why I eventually shifted my focus.

Not because coffee stopped mattering—
but because I stopped treating it as the only answer.

Coffee is important,
but it can’t carry the full weight of a business.

04 | Closing Thoughts

I’m not saying that studying coffee isn’t important.
Of course it is.

But when a café doesn’t have unlimited financial backing,
and all its energy is spent proving “I really understand coffee,”
the cost will eventually show up somewhere else.

The hardest part has never been making a better cup of coffee.
It’s learning how to run a business—
and facing the reality of operating a café with honesty and discipline.