Food Is A Popular Choice When Buying A Small Business But Is It In Reality A Simple Meal Ticket?
It’s funny how a lot of us have an ideal vocation that’s somehow or the other focussed on the food and drinks industry. Whether its retiring to the country to run an Olde Worlde Pub business or having your very own swanky new restaurant , food and drink are popular choices when setting up a small business or even running a business from home or taking up a Home Based Franchise.
For most of us the dream staysprecisely that, just a dream, but a substantial minority hopefully take the plunge and start up a business with the hope of a fantastic career in the kitchen. Of course if you look at it from the “front of house” standpoint then running your own Gastro pub or restaurant, or maybe acountry coffee shop or tea room should be easy. I mean how hard can it be selling something that costs peanuts to produce at a monstrously inflated mark-up and then possibly getting praised on top of that with a tip?
It’s really not that easy. If it was then everybody would be doing it. In fact working in the food industry is known for the long hours and the poor pay so it’s obvious that these will be issues when you are working in your own food business. Food businesses have a substantially high failure rate as a large number of considerations need to be taken into account to be successful. The sums have got tobe correct from day one as you will costs from the very beginning of your business.
Premises and workers bring their own set of issues. Premises may have to be purchased with a bank loan which will attract interest almost immediately and these days may be difficult to obtain. Also you will probably need to refurbish or convert the premises in some way. And business rates are invariably higher than you assume they are going to be – the local council definitely wants their slice of your quiche. Health and safety is a consideration too. You may need to upgrade your premises to meet fire regulations which seem to be getting increasingly more demanding. All this before you’ve even switched the cooker on!
Managing staff also has its own set of issues. It’s not realistic to expect that you can just hire and fire people willie nilly as the business demands. You will need to offer proper jobs if you want to retain good people who will help you drive the business forward. People like security and initially you will need to establish their trust and inspire a team spirit to get through the tricky times.
Everyone working in the food industry in the UK will require a Basic Food Hygiene Certificate. It is your responsibility to check this if you hire someone who is potentially going to be involved in preparing food. It’s not a difficult course to undertake to get a food hygiene certificate. I’ve done it myself in fact. The Local Council often runs these courses and mine took the best part of a day and cost me £50. But it’s yet another cost to add to all the rest before you can serve a single dinner.
By definition readers of this article will have had some experience with thehospitality industry, more often than not just as consumers though. Possibly some of us, myself included, have had a summer holiday job working in the food industry. My personal experience was that of working over the school holidays in a small restaurant in a busy seaside town and it really was not a picnic. It was incredibly hard work in fact, hot and very physical. Not for me the satisfaction of lovingly preparing a gourmet feast and presenting it to a delighted customer. I was a dogsbody in the battered sausage and chips department. This meant peeling and “eyeing” seemingly endless mountains of dirty spuds, and washing pots and pans covered in grime and stains that seemed to date back even unto to the days of Agincourt.
There are a fair old number of Franchises available on the Franchise For Sale market that have some form of food related component. In fact it’s probably reasonable to say that food franchises forms one of the largest parts of the Franchise For Sale marketplace in the UK. These vary from a Home Based Franchise in , say deep fat fryer cleaning through to major , premises based Franchises in well known high street names such as Subway or Kentucky Fried Chicken .
Is franchising an almost instant way to achieveing your dream of a food based business? Well Franchises recently have a higher success rate that non-franchised businesses but that doesn’t mean to say that Franchises are an easy meal ticket. There is plenty of work to be done and plenty of research to be gone through whichever way you choose to operate your business and, whilst you may get the opening to make a living from something you really enjoy]love that doesn’t mean there won’t be many moments along the way where you will be engaged in doing stuff that you don’t like at all.
Another way of looking at this is behind every Michelin starred meal there is a small hill of potato peeling and washing up to be done!
