How Does Chaayos Make Money From Chai Cafés?

Chaayos sells made-to-order chai, food and other drinks through its cafés, takeaway counters and online ordering. Customers can choose how they want their tea, then often buy something to eat with it. The company earns money from those orders, while paying for ingredients, employees, stores and delivery-related costs. Its accounts show why the food beside the chai matters as much as the drink in understanding the business.

What does Chaayos sell beyond chai?

Customised tea is the reason many customers recognise Chaayos. Letting people choose ingredients, sweetness and strength makes a common daily drink feel personal. A café gives them a place to meet or pause; takeaway and online orders let the same kitchen serve someone who does not sit down. Chaayos makes its core sale when a customer pays for a prepared item, whichever ordering route they choose.

But hot drinks are only part of the bill. A breakdown of FY25 consolidated operating revenue put food items at about ₹141.1 crore, or 45.5% of the total, and hot beverages at about ₹117 crore, or 37.7%. Cold beverages added about ₹21.3 crore. The remaining sales came from other products. This is a more revealing picture than describing Chaayos as a business that earns almost everything from cups of tea.

Food can lift the amount a customer spends during a visit. It also requires ingredients, preparation, safe storage and attention to waste. A larger order is good for revenue but does not automatically carry a better profit margin. We can see the sales mix, but the publicly discussed figures do not provide a reliable item-by-item profit statement for tea and food. Those margins should not be invented.

How does a café order turn into profit?

Start with the bill for a chai and a snack. Chaayos pays for tea, milk and food ingredients, packaging where needed, and the people who prepare and serve the order. It also pays to occupy, equip and run the café. A business with a physical network has to meet many of these costs whether a particular hour is busy or quiet.

An online delivery order may help use kitchen capacity and bring in a customer who is not near a table. It can also bring commissions, packaging and other fulfilment costs. The sale remains a sale of Chaayos' products; the app or ordering route is a channel for reaching the buyer. We cannot assume it earns the same amount on a delivered cup as on one served at a café.

Store location and repeat habits matter. People may buy chai several times in a week, but a café needs enough orders throughout the day to cover its staff and space. A good site can build a dependable stream of visits; a poor one still comes with rent and other commitments. That is why counting outlets alone cannot tell us whether the company makes money.

What do the latest filed results tell us?

In FY25, Chaayos' consolidated revenue from operations grew to ₹310.6 crore from ₹248.6 crore in FY24, an increase of about 25%. The company still reported a net loss of about ₹25.4 crore, although that loss was roughly half the previous year's. More customer spending and better use of costs helped narrow the gap; neither figure proves that every location is profitable.

Its consolidated FY25 cost of materials was about ₹96.3 crore, while employee benefits were about ₹78.7 crore. Depreciation and amortisation came to about ₹51.8 crore, and commissions were about ₹31.3 crore. These expenses show the layers between selling a ₹100 order and reporting profit. Adding ingredient cost alone would leave out people, premises, equipment and the channels used to sell.

Chaayos also reported about ₹37 crore of EBITDA in FY25. EBITDA is a measure of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. It helps show how operations improved before some large accounting costs, but it is not the same as net profit or cash left after every commitment. The company still ended the year with a net loss, so those results must be described together.

Readers may encounter a higher FY25 number, ₹329.7 crore, described simply as 'revenue'. That was consolidated total income. It included about ₹19.1 crore of non-operating income in addition to ₹310.6 crore of operating revenue. If the question is how much Chaayos earned by selling food and drinks, the operating figure is the clearer one.

There is also a reporting-basis difference worth keeping straight. A separate analysis of Sunshine Teahouse's standalone filing shows about ₹305 crore of FY25 operating revenue, while the ₹310.6 crore figure comes from consolidated accounts. The difference does not mean two contradictory café sales results. One includes the consolidated group and the other describes the standalone company. This article uses consolidated numbers when discussing its FY25 sales mix, costs and loss.

Why does expansion make the numbers harder to read?

Chaayos had more than 200 outlets when its FY25 consolidated accounts were discussed in February 2026. More locations can put the brand near more customers and increase sales. New cafés also need fit-outs, equipment, staff and time to build traffic. Revenue from an established location and revenue from a newly opened one may look similar in total accounts even though their economics are different.

The company had spoken about reaching 400 outlets in a future period. That is an ambition, not an achieved store count. Without a confirmed current number of mature and new stores, it would be misleading to divide annual revenue by an outlet total and claim that the answer represents a typical café. Store openings through the year, different sizes and differing sales levels would distort that shortcut.

The fall in losses suggests that growing sales helped absorb more of the company's costs in FY25. Yet stronger operating earnings have not removed its net loss. That makes the next stage about the quality of expansion: whether new cafés attract enough regular orders and whether existing ones can sell more without costs climbing at the same pace.

The sales mix gives management more than one way to improve a location. A customer might add food to a chai order, buy a cold drink in warmer weather or place an order for takeaway instead of occupying a seat. Each choice changes the order value and the work required in the kitchen. The public figures show that these product lines exist and that food is substantial; they do not show which combination produces the best store-level margin. That is why stronger revenue should be judged alongside the company's continuing net loss.

What is the real test for Chaayos?

Chaayos has made a familiar drink into a repeat café purchase and built meaningful food sales around it. FY25 consolidated operating revenue of ₹310.6 crore shows this is a substantial retail business, while the smaller ₹25.4 crore loss shows progress toward, rather than arrival at, net profit.

Its future is not decided by the number of cups it can sell alone. The company needs each group of stores to cover ingredients, people, premises and ordering costs, and it needs the growing network to carry central expenses as well. If that happens, more customers and food orders can lift profit. If store costs rise just as quickly as sales, a larger network may still struggle to earn money. That is the question the next set of filed results should answer.