Whether marketing pays off comes down to one division: divide the monthly cost by what you keep on one coffee. For a 229,000 HUF monthly Maps package (fee + ad budget) with 750 HUF kept per coffee, that’s about 12 extra coffees a day. An in-house marketer plus the ad budget costs about 951,000 HUF a month: about 49 coffees a day.
How do you work out whether it pays off?
With a break-even calculation: divide your monthly marketing cost by what you keep on each coffee sold. The result is the number of extra coffees at which marketing breaks even. Everything above that is profit.
Monthly marketing cost ÷ what you keep per coffee = extra coffees needed per month
An example with round numbers: a coffee costs 1,000 HUF and the margin is 75% (the share of the selling price left after ingredients), so you keep 750 HUF per coffee. (Use your own net price and ingredient cost; we rounded to keep it easy to follow.) We count 26 opening days a month (6 days a week).
It’s worth looking at the three options one by one, because you don’t get the same thing for your money.
How much does an in-house marketer cost?
About 801,000 HUF a month for the employer, before a single forint of advertising. According to the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH), the average gross monthly salary of marketing and PR clerks in 2025 was 709,026 HUF (638,995 HUF for those under 30). On top of that comes the 13% social contribution tax.
An in-house marketer also needs an ad budget, because Google and Meta charge you, not them, for the ads. With the same 150,000 HUF, that’s about 951,000 HUF a month, or about 1,268 coffees a month, about 49 a day.
And there’s a less visible cost: one person rarely knows Google Maps, Meta ads, measurement and photography all at once. And a café doesn’t need a marketer for a whole month anyway, only a few hours a month to set up and monitor the campaign.
How much does it cost to do it yourself?
In money, the least: just the ad budget. With a 150,000 HUF monthly budget, that’s about 8 extra coffees a day. In time it costs the most, and you can’t buy more time.
This is the work that comes with it:
- maintaining your Google Business Profile: opening hours, menu, holidays
- taking and uploading photos
- monitoring and replying to reviews
- setting up the campaign in Google Ads: targeting, area, budget, ad copy
- weekly monitoring: what works, what doesn’t, where the money goes
- measurement: how many direction requests came in, what each one cost, how it’s trending
- watching competitors: who shows up before you, and why
You know best how many hours that is for you. Multiply it by what an hour of yours is worth, or by what you could be doing behind the counter instead. Maintaining the profile works fine on your own; we wrote about it here. The campaign part is where most money tends to leak away without experience behind it.
How much does an agency cost?
With us, the Google Maps package is 79,000 HUF a month and the Google + Meta package 139,000 HUF a month; the ad budget comes on top and goes directly to Google. Details are in our pricing.
We match the ad budget to your revenue: as a starting point we recommend about 6% of monthly revenue, but at least 30,000 and at most 150,000 HUF, because around a café, Maps searches can only sensibly absorb about that much. So in the example it’s 79,000 + 150,000 = 229,000 HUF a month, about 305 coffees a month, about 12 a day.
What does this look like for three café sizes?
Surprisingly similar, and that’s the point. The cost doesn’t grow with the size of the café, but its share of revenue shrinks. All three examples assume an average basket of 2,000 HUF and 26 opening days a month.
| Small café | Medium café | Larger café | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Guests / day | 60 | 120 | 250 |
| Monthly revenue | 3.1 million HUF | 6.2 million HUF | 13 million HUF |
| Recommended ad budget | 150,000 HUF | 150,000 HUF | 150,000 HUF |
| Monthly cost (fee + budget) | 229,000 HUF | 229,000 HUF | 229,000 HUF |
| Share of revenue | 7.3% | 3.7% | 1.8% |
| Break-even in coffees | ~12 / day | ~12 / day | ~12 / day |
If you count in guests rather than coffees (2,000 HUF basket, 65% margin with food mixed in), break-even is about 7 new guests a day. At 60 guests a day that’s a lot, at 250 it’s little. So for a small café it’s worth checking more carefully whether it pays off. For a larger one, break-even is small compared with daily traffic.
What do you get for the money?
Direction requests: people who tapped “take me there” on Maps. One of our specialty café clients got 1,166 direction requests over eight months from 172,000 HUF of ads (real data from the ad account), so one direction request cost about 150 HUF.
How many of them become guests, and how many come back, we don’t promise in numbers. Some set off and change their mind, some become regulars. But we can show you how to do the maths: if a direction request costs 150 HUF and you need 12 coffees a day to break even, the thing to look at is how many of the people setting off each month become guests, and how many come back. Because a new guest is a regular in the waiting room: payback isn’t decided on the first coffee, but on the returning guests.
You don’t have to trust us blindly: we give a guarantee on the number of direction requests.
When doesn’t it pay off?
When visibility isn’t the real problem. We don’t recommend it in four situations:
- Very low revenue. Below about 500,000 HUF of monthly revenue, no marketing can meaningfully pay off.
- Too heavy a burden. If total marketing cost would go above 15% of revenue, it’s a strain.
- The business is losing money. If nothing is left over now, fix the operation first; marketing won’t solve that.
- You’re full at peak times. Then more new guests mean a queue, not revenue, so ads have to be timed for quiet hours, or wait.
What to do on Monday?
Take out your till data and work out your own break-even:
- What’s your average basket, and how many receipts do you ring up on an average day (not a peak day)?
- What’s the net price of a coffee, and what are its ingredients? The difference is what you keep per coffee.
- Divide the monthly costs above (229,000, 951,000 and 150,000 HUF + your time) by that, then the result by 26.
If you’d like to run it with your own numbers, ask for a quote: with our calculator we work out, for your revenue, how much budget you need and how many direction requests we commit to.
FAQ
How do I calculate the break-even point for marketing?
Divide your monthly marketing cost by what you keep on one item sold (net price minus ingredient cost). The result is the extra sales per month at which marketing breaks even. For a daily figure, divide by your number of opening days in the month.
How big should the marketing budget be compared with revenue?
As a starting point we recommend about 6% of monthly revenue for ads; for a café at least 30,000 and at most 150,000 HUF. Including the fee, total marketing cost above 8% needs attention, and above 15% it’s a strain.
What’s the difference between the management fee and the ad budget?
The management fee pays for the agency’s work: setup, monitoring, measurement, reporting. The ad budget goes directly to Google and pays for your ads being shown, and every forint of it is visible in the report.
How long does café marketing take to pay off?
After the first month you can already see how many people set off towards you, but payback depends on returning guests, and that takes time. That’s why we look at the numbers over 3 months, not one, and our guarantee also covers 3 months: if the number of direction requests written into the contract isn’t reached by then, we refund the management fee.