Small catering operation.

The advice is always the same and it’s always given by people whose worst customer is 2% of their revenue. Fire them, free up capacity, better clients fill the gap, you’ll be happier and richer.

Mine is a corporate account that’s about 30% of what I bring in.

They’re genuinely awful. Last-minute changes, they grind me on price every renewal, they once cancelled 200 covers the night before and expected no charge. My staff dread those days.

If I fire them I don’t have a business, I have a business with a 30% hole in it, and I lay off two people, and “better clients will fill the gap” is a sentence, not a plan.

For people who’ve dropped a client that size: how long was the hole open? Did you line up replacement work first, and how, when you’re already at capacity serving the person you’re trying to leave? I know the answer is get out. I want to know how anyone actually did it without going under in the gap.