If you have the doubtful pleasure of following my writings on a reasonably regular basis you will know that me and my mates (yes, bad grammar, but English as she is spoke) love to go out bike riding where the ultimate enjoyment is stopping for coffee to tell lies and talk B/S.

Today was the occasion of our 25th annual souvlaki bike ride (it’s only been going 5 years but the 25th annual sounds much more impressive!).

For the event we pedal for a couple of hours in the direction of Oakleigh. Now it’s worth knowing that Oakleigh in Victoria is the Greek capital of the rest of the world. There we observe the appropriate Royal Hellenic traditions and consume authentic souvlaki.

The mall where we eat is wall-to-wall Greek cafes and Greek people, other than us. So, competition makes it a cafe frequenters market and you can enjoy fantastic food that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

However, when you’ve had a large souvlaki the natural urge is for an authentic Greek coffee and to linger over it while you tell your lies and talk the appropriate B/S.

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That however would not be good for the Cafe owner because, if they want to make money, they need to have rapid throughput. In other words, diners need to eat quickly and vacate the table for the incoming hungry hordes. Lingering over coffee reduces throughput, the turnover and thus the profit.

And I’m pleased to report that the owner of our chosen place knew his apples. When we asked for coffee, the waitperson simply replied, “We don’t serve coffee.”

So what did we do?

We got up and moved to a nearby cafe that serves great coffee and had lots of diners lingering and generating low margins for the time they occupied the table.

The original cafe where we dined replaced us with more high yield, more profitable guests.

A lesson in sticking to your knitting; a business owner who resisted the urge to offer all sorts of add-ons which would be low margin and low profits. By simply sticking to his knitting he insured that he prospered.

I see many people in business who think that they should supplement their main business with other add-ons that do not offer the same profitable margins.

So check out your business. Do you offer anything in addition to your main business that takes a lot of your time, gives you small margins and doesn’t make you commensurate profit?

Or are you profitably sticking to your knitting?