What To Look For In A Particular Area

Location is of course the most important consideration. No matter how tempting your sandwiches and coffee, most people won’t travel far for their lunchtime food. They don’t have time and there are so many desirable alternatives on offer these days. It’s a buyer’s market and you need to be where the buyers are.

You have to be confident that there are sufficient people within easy reach of your chosen unit to provide a sufficient level of business. In this respect sandwich-coffee bars are different from quality restaurants. It is remarkable the distances people will travel in order to experience the delights on offer from the latest top chef. It seems to be part of the fun. With restaurants it is possible to set up in a novel location and, through advertising and word of mouth recommendations, build up business. This is not an option in the case of sandwich-coffee bars.

Your aim is to build up a clear picture of the good locations – the hot spots. This way, when you are serious about proceeding and ready to view premises as they come on to the market, you will know the ones that are likely to be worth pursuing. Why spend lots of time looking at places that are no-hopers?

Drive to different areas of town at different times of day especially lunchtime. Park the car and observe the scene – particularly near established sandwich bars. Bear in mind that the lunchtime rush for take-away food can occur at different times in different parts of the town or city. You will need to spend a fair bit of time at each location.

When considering a particular location there a number of key factors to consider; some obvious, some less so.

1 Is It Busy?

Do the pavements benefit from what a nearby competitor of mine memorably described as ‘molten people’. Is the particular road an important artery which different groups of people have to use to walk from place to place? Will you thus have a captive audience? These are particularly important considerations for the passing trade element of your business.

2. Are There Nearby Offices?

The lunchtime office trade is an important factor for most sandwich-coffee bars in town and city centres. Remember people will not walk all that far for a sandwich, even a very good one. They might have as little as half an hour for lunch, so a few hundred yards can make a difference. The British climate can also make longer outings at lunch time hazardous affairs.

Do a bit of snooping around. You might discover the head office of a major company a short walk away. Great news! But if it has a good quality, heavily subsidised canteen it won’t be much help to you (though people do often fancy a change and a breath of fresh air).

If you see a site being redeveloped check with the planning authority to find out what it’s going to be and indeed whether they are aware of any other developments which might be happening in the near future in the area.

3. Are There Some Sandwich-Coffee Bars In The Area Already?

If not it is probably because there isn’t enough business. Given the massive increase in the number of take-away food outlets in recent years in numerous locations it is unlikely that you will break into virgin territory. In general it’s more important to go where the business is and compete with the existing operations on quality and new ideas. Having said that, if there are two or three established operations near your preferred site offering something very similar to what you have in mind you might well do better to look elsewhere. There’s no point in saturating the market.

There is something of the law of the jungle about it all. At any time there are usually one or two weaker beasts in an area ready to be preyed upon and picked off. It may well be the case that a nearby owner has been at it for quite some time and is longing to retire to Spain. He may not be up to the idea of taking on a whole lot of new ideas in order to compete with thrusting incomers. You never know, it might be you one day….