Money laundering is the main illegitimate reason, but since you asked about legitimate reasons, there are a few:

1. Businesses that involve lots of micro transactions, ie laundromats, carwashes, arcades, etc.

2. Businesses that have a lot of customers who don’t really use credit or debit cards, ie laundromats, arcades, etc.

3. Businesses that operate on an extremely thin margin and can’t afford interchange/processing fees.

One thing in common with all of them is that they are all traditionally cash oriented businesses. And one of them has the word launder in it, lol. Doesn’t mean they’re all illegitimate though, some business models just aren’t conducive to taking credit cards.

Keep in mind that when you start hawking products in your videos, you’re likely to lose some followers.

A lot of the people buying these taxi rides are probably regulars, and are just hiring the same old cabs time and time again just out of force of habit / not inclined to look for alternatives.

When you see a cab dropping off a fare at your grocery store you work at, maybe approach the customer with a card and explain the perks of choosing your cab service in the future. Otherwise they’ll probably never know you exist because they aren’t going to bother looking, since their current cab driver is working “okay enough” in their view.

Ever watched Pawn Stars?

“This comic book appraises for $10k. How much you want for it?”

“No less than $75k.”

“Well, there’s no way you’re getting that. I’ll give you $4 for it and a New Kids on the Block cassette tape. And not a penny more.”

And it goes back and forth like that for a while until eventually they settle on around $8k.

Moral of the story is, both sides usually start out asking for an absurd number, knowing that eventually they’ll meet in the middle. Salary negotiations are no different. Employer wants to pay as little as possible, employee wants to be paid as much as possible, and both parties know that the reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

If they are making $18 now, and asking for $28, then perhaps start out with offering them something like $22 now, and another $2 in 6 months.

That was my first thought as well - with that much positive cash flow you could surely hire someone to reduce most of your workload so you could focus on A) taking more time off and working shorter days, and B) spending more of your time improving the business, instead of just operating it.

I’ve thought about doing something similar, but the logistics of operating such a business sounds like an absolute nightmare:

1. Ask any successful restaurant how much ingredients they buy annually, and then figure out how much farm you would actually need to grow all that food. It would likely take many, many acres.
2. Having to predict exactly how many customers you’ll get, and when, and what they’ll want to order, MONTHS in advance.
3. Having to come up with seasonal recipes that correspond with exactly which crops are ready for harvest at any given time.
4. Growing exactly the right amount of each of those ingredients so you don’t end up with too much extra, or end up running out of a necessary ingredient for a dish way before you run out of the other ingredients.
5. Making sure those ingredients are ready exactly when you need them (when the other ingredients are also ready).

And you probably are thinking along the lines of, “I can be creative and come up with new recipes on the fly based on what I have at any given time,” but really try to think about exactly how much time you’re going to want to spend doing that. You’re going to be running a farm, and a restaurant, and somehow also have the time and energy every day to figure out what you can do with 50lbs of eggplant, 4lbs of wheat, and 3 tomatoes, to make a dish people are going to want to pay money to eat? That sounds extremely exhausting to me.

I know you do appliance repair, but the process should be the same as an auto repair business:

1. Charge a diagnostic fee upfront (usually 1 hour of labor). This way, even if the customer decides not to complete the repair with you, at least you get paid for the time you invested into it.
2. Provide an estimate showing the overall cost of parts and labor.
3. If the customer asks for itemization, then provide an actual breakdown of labor and the parts costs you’re charging.
4. Remind the customer that you cannot use parts they bring in themselves to perform repairs, they need to buy the parts through you for liability reasons (protecting both you AND them).
5. If they say “Thanks, I think I’ll just buy the parts myself and install it at home”, then fine. At least you got paid for your time and work up to that point. Most people will decide it’s not worth the hassle of trying to find the parts themselves online and do all the work themselves. Some will, but most won’t.

$300k is a crazy huge amount of money for setting up a coffee shop.

I would suggest finding a way to keep it under $100k, and then if the business is successful then you can dump more into it at that point.

The problem is that coffee shops don’t usually make a ton of money, and you’re still going to have normal overhead to deal with (lease, payroll, insurance, etc) while you’re paying off this massive loan. With that kind of debt it could take over a decade before you’re finally paid off and can take some profit for yourself, and by then it might already be time to renovate again.

Try to break down exactly how much profit you’ll make from each cup of coffee, and how many you hope to sell each day, then use that to determine how long it would take to repay the debt. As an overly-simplified example example:

• $5 per cup of coffee, -$1 cost of ingredients + materials (cups, etc), -$1 business overhead
• $3 profit per cup of coffee
• 100 cups of coffee per day = $300 profit per day
• Assume you need to pay yourself $200/day to survive, leaving $100/day remaining.
• Loan is $300k, assume total cost of loan is $450k after interest.
• $450k / $100 = 4,500 days (12.3 years) until loan is paid off

I’m not trying to scare you away from starting this cafe, I just want you to be realistic about how much money you borrow in the beginning and how long it’s going to take to pay it back.

I would highly recommend you sit down and list out what all these costs actually are, that are amounting to $300k, and start trimming out things you don’t absolutely need, or finding cheaper options. As an example, do you really need $5,000 tables, or could you get by with some $250 tables for a few years? Do you need original oil paintings hanging on the walls right away, or could you just use some cheaper prints for a while? And so on.

If it was just a one-off order from a first-time customer, that would be one thing. But since they’re a loyal repeat customer then it’s best to assume they’re not lying to you. Could’ve been a porch pirate, or a courier screwup, but unfortunately there’s no way for you to really know. I’d let them know you’re making a one-time policy exception as a “thank you” for being a loyal customer, ship them a replacement, and just ask them to let you know if the original turns up, and you’ll pay for return shipping if it does.

I once ordered an item from a large online retailer, and similar to your scenario the item was marked as delivered to my house, however the item was never actually delivered. My Ring cameras never detected anybody either. I contacted the retailer, who promptly shipped me a replacement for free. Two days later, my neighbor came and dropped off the original package - turns out the courier just dropped it at the wrong house. I contacted the retailer and let them know the original shipment arrived, and they gave me a pre-paid shipping label to drop it off at Fedex at my next convenience, which I did. Granted, not everybody is going to be honest like that, but I think a lot of people are - and they are a LOT more likely to be honest, and a good customer going forward, if you give them the benefit of the doubt and make things right for them.

I won’t repeat the advice about eating the loss, since that’s already been made pretty clear and you seem willing to accept that answer.

I’ll just add one thing, you should consider the fact that the client might refer you to other people and mention how much they paid for it, causing those people to expect a similar cost. So you may want to consider letting the client know that you accidentally gave them a great deal by mis-charging them, and that while you are not asking for any additional money, please just keep the actual normal cost in mind when making any referrals or writing any public reviews.