My Café Lasted Eleven Months

I opened a café with my redundancy money and a very strong opinion about banana bread. Eleven months later I was selling the coffee machine at a loss to a man who kept calling it "a bit dated".

I did all the things you're told not to do. I picked the unit because I liked the windows. I never properly worked out what a flat white cost me to make. I gave free refills to regulars, and it turned out the regulars were the only people coming in.

The day I handed the keys back, I sat in the car park for an hour because I couldn't face going home to tell my wife the final number. When I did tell her, she already knew it. She'd been doing the books in her head for months and waiting for me to catch up.

For about a year I couldn't walk past a coffee shop without pricing up their fit-out and feeling sick.

I work in someone else's kitchen now. The pay is steady and the worries go home with the owner. I've also learned what a flat white costs, and I'm saving up. Not for another café, probably. But the banana bread is still excellent, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise.

Sample story, written by the Bloody Loser team to show the kind of thing we love to read. Share your own.