Family fun day without the remortgage?

jexygirl

I assume you would fund the food stall, to make profit on it which means you only have "a little bit" for advertising - hence your reference to a cup of tea. Yes the tea bag costs 2p, but add staff costs, consumables, sugar, milk, cup, staff to make it, power to heat water, the establishment costs, mobile or other, tea and coffee can be profitable, but its not as simple as t bag 2p, sell at 1.20 = 1.18 profit.
If you dont invest in the advertising, and make it attractive to people, you wont get people there and hence make the profit on the food stall, so let someone or several people pay you to pitch their food stall which also gives variety, then you get their pitch money regardless of teh number of customers, and its allows you to spend more on the advertising, resulting in more custom, resulting in happy pitch renters, who will want to book again. I know you want it to be a cheap family day, but you are not a charity if you are in buisness.

Myself, If it was a family day, I'd take a picnic.... the food wouldnt be what drew me, the entertainment and variety of the day would as well as how well planned / organised it was.

Jex

heretolearn_2

It's an interesting idea and something I looked into doing (well similar) also in Kent a couple of years ago. I have a lot of event organisation experience but I just couldn't make the figures add up at the time, to make it worth doing and earn a living from it. If you only want to make a few 100 each time, then ok, but it still takes full-time work to pull it off, especially if you are thinking of every week or so.

Sit down and do a business plan. List EVERY expense and requirement you can think of, even if you have to estimate right now. I don't want to be rude but you are very naive if you think charging a cup of tea only cost 2p to produce. There are big gaps in your plans I can see straight away: where are you going to store 100 gazebos in between events - you need to hire a lock-up or somewhere, they won't fit in your spare bedroom. Who is going to put them up and take them down - more staff costs (and you won't be able to do it yourself, as the event organiser you are going to spend all day running round like a blue-arsed fly as it is). How are you going to get them to the venue - van hire? Selling exhibition space there - you need money for the marketing materials and then spend a lot of time out visiting/on the phone, selling the spaces. Who is going to run the children's activities? More staff costs. Parking attendants needed? Depending on venue you may need to get your own event license from the council.