Roake & Cook Limited

23/10/2026

It's not a character flaw. It's human nature. You wouldn't have started the business if you weren't wired to see the upside.

But here's what I regularly see.

The forecast assumes the big retailer says yes.
It assumes the launch lands on time.
It assumes nobody leaves, nobody gets sick, nobody pays late.
It assumes material costs hold.
It assumes equipment doesn't break down in August.

Then one of those things happens. Usually two. And the cash that looked comfortable in March is gone by June.

The fix isn't to stop being optimistic. The fix is to build a second forecast next to the first one.

Take your numbers and ask four questions:

1) What if my biggest customer pays 30 days later than promised?
2) What if my top-line comes in 20% under plan?
3) What if my main input cost rises 15%?
4) What if I lose my best employee next month?

Run the model. Look at the bank balance in week 13.

If the answer is "we survive" - carry on.

If the answer is "we don't" - you've just found the three decisions you need to make this quarter. An overdraft facility you don't yet need. A second supplier. A deposit policy. A key-person insurance quote.

The optimistic forecast tells you where you're going.

The stress test tells you whether you'll arrive.

You need both on the desk.

20/10/2026

Your gross margin is 42%. But is that the full picture?

For food businesses, the difference between a healthy-looking gross margin and a profitable product can come down to the costs sitting outside that headline number.

Production labour, packaging, wastage, freight, co-packing and retailer deductions can all affect the real economics of selling a product.

And if you're not accounting for them when making decisions, you could be:
- Discounting too aggressively
- Taking on volume that isn't profitable
- Accepting retailer deals that don't stack up
- Scaling a product that delivers less profit than you think

Revenue doesn't tell you how profitable a product is. And gross margin doesn't always tell you the full story.

Our advice? Look beyond gross margin and understand your contribution margin — the money left after the costs that vary with sales.

Start with one of your best-selling products. Include every relevant variable cost and see what the numbers really tell you.

You might be surprised by what you find.

Do you know the true contribution margin of your best-selling product?

16/10/2026

Revenue: £1.4m. Growing 38% year on year.

On paper, the best year they'd ever had.

The reality? £14,000 in the bank on the 28th. Payroll due Friday. VAT bill the following Tuesday.

Here's what was happening underneath:

→ Debtor days had crept from 42 to 68. Two retail accounts were paying on 60 day terms.

→ Stock had ballooned. New packaging minimum order quantities and a new SKU had added £92k of inventory sat in the warehouse.

→ Supplier terms were 30 days.

Every new wholesale order made the cash problem worse, not better.

The fix wasn't a bigger overdraft. It was four levers, pulled at once:

Debtor days down to 45. Deposits on new accounts, weekly statements, two slow-payers dropped.

Stock down by £38k. Slow lines paused, MOQs renegotiated on two key lines.

Supplier terms extended to 45 with the two biggest suppliers. Asked, got it, took 20 minutes.

Price up 5% across the trade list. Lost zero accounts.

Cash position three months later: £148,000.

Same revenue. Same margin. Different business.

If growth feels like it's chewing through your bank balance, you're not failing. You're running out of working capital. That's a fixable problem.

14/10/2026

Real feedback from clients we work with every day.

Simple numbers. Better decisions. Stronger businesses.

12/10/2026

02/10/2026

Many business owners fail to track where their customers come from.

Without this, they have very little idea where marketing efforts are working well, and where they need some work.

This leads to:

❌ Activity without clarity

Lots of posting. Lots of effort.
Very little data showing what actually converts into paying clients.

❌ Spend without strategy

Ad budgets drip out across multiple platforms - none of them big enough to generate meaningful results or learnings.

❌ No visibility on true ROI

Leads come in…but no one tracks which channel produced profitable customers versus time-wasters.

❌ Decisions based on noise, not numbers

Trends, competitors and agencies drive choices - not your financial data.

Marketing shouldn’t feel like gambling.

Instead:

✅ Track every lead source inside your systems
✅ Measure cost per lead and cost per client
✅ Link marketing spend to actual profit - not vanity metrics
✅ Double down only on what delivers returns
✅ Stop funding channels that don’t pay you back

If you don’t know which channels are making you money (and which are quietly draining it), your accounts should be telling you.

Structure your numbers to give you that information and track it on a weekly basis.

Use it to focus efforts and see your business grow.

30/09/2026

3 Reasons your pricing is quietly killing your margins.

- You priced to beat competitors, not to reflect your value
- Your price hasn't moved since you launched
- You're discounting to drive volume, but destroying margin in the process

28/09/2026

Every sale — wholesale, DTC, farm shop, market stall — goes to one sales code. One line. One lump sum.

The P&L says you made £240,000 last year. But it can't tell you which products earned that money and which ones quietly ate it.

A producer came to us with 'healthy margins'.

Revenue growing. Felt good.

We split their sales into five codes.

Within a week, the picture changed completely. Gift sets — their 'best seller' at Christmas — were running at a 6% margin after packaging and fulfilment.

Online bundles were the real engine at 52%.

They'd been pouring marketing spend into the wrong product for two years.

Setting up proper sales codes takes an afternoon. Not a week. Not a consultancy project. An afternoon in Xero.

One afternoon that lets you see margin by product, by channel, by season.

Every month. Automatically.

You can't improve what you can't measure. And you can't measure what you've buried in a single line.