Know exactly where the money goes, for health food stores

Money in a health food store business has a shape of its own, and most tools ignore it. A shop turns cash into stock and hopes to turn it back into more cash. The awkward part is the middle bit, where a good chunk of your money is sitting on shelves doing nothing. A shop can be profitable on paper and completely out of cash at the same time, purely because it bought too well.

Rent and rates do not care how the week went. That fixed base is the thing every retail decision has to clear first, and knowing it as a weekly number changes how you think about quiet Tuesdays.

Margin varies enormously line by line, and gut feel about which lines are good is often wrong. The lines that feel successful are usually the ones that sell fast, which is not the same as the ones that make money.