Taking over a small Post Office, advice please

Pennywise

Be wary of the "turnover" figure given. Some convenience stores include the lottery and paypoint (elec, phone top ups) etc., as part of their sales to inflate the top line figure even though the money is passed straight on - strictly speaking, it should only be the commission income that should be included in sales. Won't make a difference to profits declared, but it can make a business look to have higher sales than they really do to make it look more attractive.

I'd ask for a breakdown of their "sales" figures into the usual broad categories, i.e. tobacco/cigs, alcohol, groceries, newspapers, etc so that you can properly evaluate where their sales mix and identify the risk areas as well as any untapped potential growth areas.

heretolearn_2

Think very long and hard about this, and take your time looking at the business from all angles. Visit at different times of day and on different days. How many customers? Local or through traffic? What types of products sell, and which don't.

Village shops (including POs) are folding left, right and centre as they can't match supermarket prices, so tend to mainly be used in emergencies. The ones that survive are not on the whole bog standard local shops.

I stopped off at a tiny village shop the other day and was pleasantly surprised. It was the PO as well. It was clearly well used by the community in some senses; it had a range of basic loo rolls/milk type supplies you'd need suddenly and wouldn't go to supermarket just for. There were no supermarkets within a couple of miles. The window was full of cards and posters for local stuff. But they were also on a road that was a route beween two towns, with parking spaces out front. that's how I ended up in there buying an ice cream as a one-off passer by. They also did a load of local produce like veggies, eggs and meat including local game - at fairly cheap prices compared to in-town farmer's markets, and it looked like that was good for them. As it's still a proper agricultural area they also had a few wellies/buckets/brooms/string/oil/bags of chicken feed etc - which might not work in a commuter's village.