I don’t think it’s unethical but it’s kind of annoying. I would be irritated enough that my kids trick or treating was used as an opportunity to pass an advertisement past my eyes that I probably wouldn’t consider whatever was being advertised. Maybe I’m more jaded than the average person but I think you risk doing more harm than good this way.
Maybe if you set up a booth or table somewhere that basically was “free trick or treat candy sponsored by [business name]” and then had above average treats, like larger or even full sized candy bars. That way everyone would know up front what was going on and offering noticeably great candy would impress me as a parent. Doing it this way seems less like you’re trying to sneak in an ad and more like you’re trying to use your business to do something nice for the kids, even while advertising your business.
So just so you’re clear what you’re asking for is free consulting and you usually get what you pay for in that regard. So take what I, and everyone else, say with a grain of salt.
All your costs seem too low. I run a local coffee shop in a smallish town of 30,000 in the Midwest USA. I don’t know how different things are in the UK, but my monthly expenses, including payroll, rent, and basically everything we spend money on aside from green coffee and packaging (we’re also a roasting company) usually runs around $30k USD. I don’t know how you could run a coffee shop that was busy enough to make money for 8,500. Even years ago before we started roasting and we were just a little coffee shop barely making it in our historic downtown, monthly costs were never less than $25,000. Payroll was always the highest. I don’t know what cost of living is in Manchester, but can you really get away with only 4,000/mo in staffing? There’s no way I could do that. I spend more than that on staffing every single week. Our bi-weekly payroll numbers are usually just over $8,000 USD once payroll tax is accounted for.
I also don’t see an insurance line item.
Cups & utilities at 100. Is this an error? I don’t know why you would put cups with utilities or how either of those things could be that low even individually unless you aren’t serving drinks to go.
400 seems extremely low for coffee. My business also roasts and wholesales to coffee shops and almost every single one of my accounts buys more coffee than that every week, even the slow ones and even at wholesale prices.
Take all costs you think you will incur, then go back and do it again adding anything else you think of, then add 15%. Then reduce your expected sales by 25%. If you can’t make it on those numbers then you need to reevaluate. Everything will cost more than you think it will, it will be harder than you think it will, and sales will probably not meet your targets at first. Be prepared for this with cash in the bank to keep it running. We lost time of money year one due to poor planning, broke even years 2-3, years 4-5 we’re the pandemic, then we finally turned a significant profit in year 6. We’re just ending year 7 and things are now churning smoothly. It is a very hard, often very long grind.
If you’ve never done this before, I suggest you find a mentor or, as a last resort, hire a consultant to look your numbers over professionally. You don’t want to go through all that effort only to be blindsided by unforeseen realities.