Hands-on business lessons
Learn how the business world works by trying it.
Price a burger, staff a Friday rush, find out where a warehouse store really makes its money. Each lesson puts you inside a real kind of business, with real numbers and where they come from.
Welcome back
The business world, as one town
Tap any place
8 lessons to try · 0 of 15 big ideas met
Skip the mapRestaurant Row: open now.
Industries · RestaurantRestaurant Row
How a restaurant really runs: thin margins, Friday rushes, suppliers and permits.
Lessons here- You sell a $15 burger. How much do you keep?Open
- Hiring your first crewOpen
- Permits before you openOpen
- Reading your monthly numbersOpen
Every place in town, as a list
The center of town
An empty lot in the middle of town. Turn what you learned into a plan for your own business: budget, break-even, first hires, permits.
- Is this business right for me? (coming soon)
- Your startup budget (coming soon)
- Your break-even point (coming soon)
- Your first hires (coming soon)
- Your permit checklist (coming soon)
The Foundations Loop
Selling meals, memberships, subscriptions or fees: the ways money comes in.
What's left of each sale after paying for everything.
Costs that stay put, costs that grow with each sale, and the break-even point.
How businesses decide what to charge.
Coming soon
Why profitable businesses still run out of money: the timing of money.
Coming soon
Hiring, wages and scheduling.
Coming soon
Ads, regulars and word of mouth.
Coming soon
What makes a business hard to copy.
Coming soon
Suppliers, spoilage, inventory and shipping.
Coming soon
Profit report, balance sheet and cash flow statement.
Coming soon
Savings, loans and investors.
Coming soon
Legal structure, permits and taxes.
Coming soon
What can go wrong, and who gets paid to carry the risk.
Coming soon
From one location to many.
Coming soon
How each kind of business usually fails, compared side by side.
Coming soon
Industry neighborhoods
How a restaurant really runs: thin margins, Friday rushes, suppliers and permits.
Why a cup costs what it does, and why rent and slow afternoons matter so much.
- How a coffee shop makes money (coming soon)
- The slow-afternoon problem (coming soon)
Also covered in:
Retail and online stores: inventory, shipping, and paying for ads to find customers.
- What a sale really costs online (coming soon)
- Inventory: cash sitting on shelves (coming soon)
Regulars, booking every chair, and renting a chair vs. owning the shop.
- Rent a chair or own the shop? (coming soon)
Memberships: getting paid before you deliver, and keeping members from quitting.
- The membership model (coming soon)
Also covered in:
Software: big costs up front, then each new customer costs little.
- How a software company makes money (coming soon)
Construction and trades: bids, materials, and waiting to get paid.
- Winning a bid without losing money (coming soon)
Making things: machines, materials, and why making more can make each one cheaper.
- What it costs to make one more (coming soon)
Consulting and agencies: when people's time is the product.
- Selling hours (coming soon)
Big-company landmarks
How lending other people's money turns into a business.
- How banks make money (coming soon)
Burgers, yes. But most of its restaurants are run by franchise owners, who pay it rent and fees.
- How McDonald's makes money (coming soon)
Also covered in:
Coffee on a lot of corners, and customers who put money on the app before they buy.
- How Starbucks makes money (coming soon)
Huge fixed costs and prices that change by the day. Why every empty seat hurts.
- How airlines make money (coming soon)
Also covered in:
An online store, a delivery network and a cloud computing business under one roof.
- How Amazon makes money (coming soon)
A marketplace: it doesn't own the cars. It connects riders and drivers and takes a fee.
- How Uber makes money (coming soon)
A warehouse store with low prices and thin markups. So where does the profit come from?
- How Costco makes money (open)
Search is free to use. So who pays? Advertisers.
- How Google makes money (coming soon)
A business where risk is the product.
- How insurance works (coming soon)
Subscriptions, and paying for shows long before anyone watches them.
- How Netflix makes money (coming soon)
Company names are lesson topics, not partnerships.
How it works
Every lesson is a stack of order tickets. Each ticket is one small thing to do.
Ticket 01Guess
Each lesson opens with a question about a real business. Make your best guess, then see the real answer and where it comes from.
Ticket 02Try
Take the business apart: tap through a recipe cost card, sort the costs, move the sliders in a lab and watch the numbers change.
Ticket 03Decide
Make an owner's calls and see what happens next. Every lesson ends with a real task, like pricing a dish or staffing a Friday night.
Four ways in
The tracks are woven together: an industry lesson teaches the big ideas, and the big ideas borrow from real companies.
Foundations
3 of 15 concepts openThe ideas every business shares: how money comes in, where it goes, and why some businesses run out of it.
Industries
3 of 9 industries openRun one kind of business from the inside, starting with a restaurant you set up yourself.
Big companies
3 of 10 companies openHow famous companies really make money, read from their own annual reports.
Start your own
Coming laterTurn what you learned into a plan for your own business: budget, break-even, first hires, permits.
Why you can trust it
Real sources
Every number in a lesson links to where it came from: government data, industry surveys and companies' own annual reports. So far the lessons cite 65 sources.
Examples say so
When a number is a simplified example rather than a fact, it's labeled “example.” Rules that change by state or city link to the official page and say when it was last checked.
Spot something wrong?
Tell us. We read every note, and lessons are checked again before they go live.
How lessons are made · Every business term, in plain English