There's tons of businesses that "print money" as one or two man LLCs but they don't scale well beyond that point. There's several overhead jumps as your company grows to a point where you have to pay someone else to do something because you can no longer do it yourself (hiring your first few employees, company gets so big you need to get someone to do HR/payroll stuff, company owns so much stuff you need to hire someone to specifically maintain the equipment, etc, etc). Sure you can scale but then some other smaller business with lower margins comes along and out-competes you. For businesses where the cost of entry is low this happens fast.

It also is worth mentioning that owning a small business is not nearly as good of a work/life balance as being an employee. Expect to work 40hr week managing the business directly and then another 20-40 doing all the behind the scenes stuff that the business needs in order to run. Obviously conditions vary a lot based on what you do and the local economy.

Yeah, our 2-man devops consulting business was printing money until we tried to scale up. Consulting needs a constant stream of new clients so you need a sales guy, then you need to carry a bench so you can start working on new contracts ASAP, then you need benefits and salaries to attract the kind of senior talent you expect from a consultancy, computers, desks, space...

It's even worse in blue collar industries where you have OSHA and possibly DOT circling like vultures waiting for you to slip up. The regs are basically written in a way that it's impossible to comply with the letter of the law 100% of the time at scale. You can't possibly be sure every employee will do everything perfect all the time. It's like speeding. Everyone does it and the unlucky pay the price. One person can't be bothered to tie off to the scissor lift and there goes everyone's bonus.

In the UK we also have a VAT tax cliff that further compounds this problem. If your business makes more than £80k you have to add 20% VAT, but before that you don't. It results in strange scenarios like an accountant recently told a family friend to take more vacations as she was getting too close to the cliff.

Makes a lot of small businesses unscalable, but also makes a lot of smaller business ideas viable.

Do they bring the equipment in and sharpen on-site or do they bring freshly sharpened knives and take the dull ones to be sharpened? Seems like if you had enough initial capital you could buy a ton of new sharp knives, swap them every day, and then spend a whole weekend day doing the sharpening of the knives you rotated out. Then you could keep your 9-5 M-F and make some cash by working a pretty low stress weekend day.

I worked in kitchens for about 10 years and the most common model I am aware of is to pick up the knives weekly and drop some other ones off. I assumed the knives belonged to the sharpening folks. They were garbage knives, but garbage knives are as good as your $300 tempered Japanese knife if you sharpen them.

And then for a couple of days after you gotta tell all your fellow cooks "watch the knives" or you'd all cut yourself after a month of handling what amount to stainless steel rods.

A blunt knife is a dangerous knife. It's stupid to use a blunt knife at all, let alone for weeks on end.

While you can get a good edge on a knife made with garbage steel, the edge goes away quickly.

Those cheap restaurant supply knives he's talking about can hold an edge just fine. They look cheap because they have that plastic handle, but they are very durable in my experience.

Durable yes, good edge retention? Not so much. Restaurants like this tend to prefer softer more durable steels, like that found in your classic Henkels (usually refereed to as German stainless). A chef's personal knives tend to be a very different style. Usually modeled after the Japanese style of knife (very thin stock, very high (62+) hrc). And the steel tends to be either carbon steel or vg-10 or better for stainless.

But if you think about it, maybe that's much better type of knife for the sharpening company. You need their service all the time.

Many sharpening companies provide knives and keep them sharp for a flat rate. The more they have to be sharpened, the faster they get worn out. If it is on the sharpening company to replace worn blades, they will want to strike a balance between lifespan and replacement costs.

The fancy "Japanese steel" knives cost the earth, but high-quality commercial knives (99% identical) don't. Commercial knives are designed with a different approach to safety. They usually have larger grips/guards that, while cumbersome to noobs, reduce injuries. A blade destined to be used constantly and resharpened many many times will also be substantially heavier. That may seem a problem for cutting tomatoes in your kitchen at home, but try prepping a few hundred chickens each day for a week and you will appreciate the heft.

My dad pays a guy to come to his house in a van and sharpen his fishing knives in the driveway. He fishes a few times a week and has quite a few knives. I was surprised at the price he paid (although I forget exactly what it was), but he only does it a couple of times a year (I assume due to his large knife collection).

The guy has all the equipment in his van and does everything on site, and it's his full time job. We're a coastal town with year-round fishing, and the guy apparently makes a decent living because of that.

I cook a lot and I like having sharp knives (makes keeping all of my fingers easier). I get mine sharpened every few months and pay about $5/knife at a mom-and-pop sharpening shop. I could learn to sharpen them, but it's not very much fun, and for $5/knife, there's really no reason other than having an extra bit of knowledge.

When I was a kid there was a knife sharpening truck that'd come to my block (Queens, NYC) twice a year. Think ice cream man / food truck, but for sharpening knives. They would take your knives, and you come back some time later and they're as sharp as can be. For straight blades you can do it yourself, but to hone something with serrations is much more difficult and they'd do it no problem. They'd also let curious kids watch from just outside the truck :)

so how do they sharpen knives with serraed edges?

Probably Mike & Son Sharpening Service , just used them last month, such a great guy, highly recommended.

I discussed this with my barber. Professional grade scissors used to cut hair are very expensive (over $1000). They have them sharpened regularly. They swap them out for another pair to take them off site to be sharpened but I believe they swap back after.

Both, some are full knife contractors so the restaurant doesn't need to buy any, and drop off freshly sharpened replacements and others are just somebody with a van onsite. Large butcher shops and delis need this service too.

I heard a podcast where the guy did this out of his house. He had a self-serve dropbox in his front yard that people could deposit knives into (in addition to going around to businesses).