Opening a sandwich shop...help plz!

SageFire

One thing people ARE changing is the way they eat. I suggest an ALL NATURAL AND ORGANIC Shop. There's a sandwich shop near my home, and It's the only one of it's kind around here. The recession has not affected their business since people are trying to take better care of themselves. Try their website at greengos . biz

Organic and all natural doesn't mean "more expensive"....the difference in price is only pennies. Please take a look at their menu. I only wish there were more places like this nearby. It's so nice to have the healthy alternative.

Think about what type of food you really want to offer. Healthy food is something you can definitely be proud of, especially if it tastes good.

Best of luck to you and I wish you plenty of success in your new business.

paulwf

I'm not sure of your background but if you haven't been in the catering industry before I'd strongly advise getting a job in a company similar to the one you'd like to set up first. If you can spend a year working for Prets...the systems you will learn there can be applied to a greasy spoon or a Michelin starred restaurant and could mean the difference between you going bankrupt and taking early retirement!

The absolute key business principle in catering is the "cost of goods", not keeping an eye on this is why so many catering establishments fail. Essentially your ingredients cost has to be 33% of the final product (or lower). Bear this in mind whenever you are thinking about your concept, e.g. if you think a sandwich would be improved by adding a spoonful of pine nuts that costs you 20p remember you have to charge the customer an extra 60p. Not only do you have to get recipes right but when implementing them you then have to measure or weigh out everything.

Despite the recession sandwich sales are still huge, although as has been pointed out £2 meal deals and a saturated market is making it a tough market. The problem I normally see with sandwich outlets is they are only really busy from 11am to 1pm, and are totally dead after 2pm. You have to sell a hell of a lot of sandwiches in around 3 hours to make a living. Basically you need a location where you can catch the commuters on the way to work so you can get trade from 7am onwards - to do this you'll need coffees and pastries and other light breakfast bites.

If you look at sandwich shops for sale a lot seem to only turnover 50K because they are only busy for a couple of hours. To me that suggests there is very little profit to be made from "small scale" shops.

BTW speed of service is absolutely essential to making your concept work. Commuters on the way to work are pushed for time so you need enough staff and machines to get them their coffee within 2 minutes. 30 minute lunchtimes are becoming the norm so again a wait of more than a couple of minutes will put people off.

lswwong

Spot on advice from Paulwf!

I worked part-time in a Pret shop many years ago and it was exactly like that. Though the Pret guys started the business while in recession (they both took redundancy, I think) so that's something to think about.

Yeah, the number of times I had money to spend but only 10 mins to buy a reasonably decent sandwich/coffee to take back to the office .... that's where places like Pret and Eat win cos it's just pay and go!

Fat_Fairy

I used to have a shop/post office. The only advice i would give is to budget VERY carefully, account for every penny, and keep meticulous records of everything. Good luck with it!.