Fast Food investment Advice

cheeky-virgin

I'd like to open a fast food business - fried chicken shop /peri peri / pizza etc in east London somewhere.

I have £30k to invest in fast food business, i don't have any experience but want to get in some experience people to run the business while i am managing them. BTW where i live we only have one fish and chip shop in 1 mile long road but no other fast food business around.


Is that a good investment idea?

I spoke to few experienced people and they think it could be setup within the 20-25K budget.

Any advice is welcome about do and don't.

cheers

Ebe_Scrooge

It's a bit of a risk investing in a business you have no experience of. It would be a good idea to spend a few months working in a fast food outlet to get at least an idea of what's involved. Even though you say you'll be getting experienced staff in, you need to have an idea of how the business model works.

Aside from that, there are a number of things you need to research first. Will you get planning permission from the local council to open the business ? How much will it cost to buy ( or rent ) and equip the premises ? What are the ongoing business rates going to be ? These are things you can research ahead of time and get a pretty accurate estimate - don't rely on people who have said "£25K should be enough".

Perhaps most importantly of all, how much is your projected turnover and profit ? It's difficult to forecast accurately, but you need to be realistic in your estimates. Will you realistically get 10 customers per night or 500 ? What other businesses are nearby ? Are you planning on targeting people on their way home from an evening at the pub, or office workers on their lunch break ?

Once you've estimated your profits, what about your staff ? How many staff do you envisage employing, and what will you pay them ? Don't forget it's not just the baseline wages you need to consider, think about things like holiday pay, sick pay, employer's NI contributions. There's plenty of information about this kind of thing on the government websites.

In summary, there's a lot of research and preparation to be done before you even think of doing this. I'm not saying you can't make a go of it ( I sincerely hope you do ), but spend the time doing your homework first