At Emerald Coast, we know restaurants. We help restaurant owners and business leaders in the foodservice industry with selling, starting a business, and managing finances. We essentially help with the entire lifecycle of a restaurant business, which, as many people know, takes a lot of work. We can see from reality TV and actual roles in the foodservice industry that running a restaurant is not always an easy process.
When we conduct feasibility studies for restaurants, we look to help our clients to avoid some of the potential problems that arise in the course of figuring out how to maintain operations and compete in high-pressure situations. Here’s some of what we do to support our clients, to make sure that they have a good head start.
Area Demographics and Guest Profiles
One of the things we look at in a restaurant feasibility study is area demographics – what sorts of communities and cultures live in a particular area, and people’s ages, genders and other factors. We want to make sure that your restaurant plan matches your customer base in a profound way. We develop guest profiles for this purpose, and base our research on understanding who the customer’s likely to be and what they would want when they enter the door.
Market Opportunities
Our professionals also talk to clients about finding holes in the market – understanding opportunities where there is a lack of certain type of foodservice. Maybe that’s a coffee house or café. Maybe it’s a cafeteria style business. Maybe it’s a specialty restaurant that doesn’t exist for miles and miles around. In general, one of the biggest rules in the restaurant business is to avoid over-saturating a local area with the same kind of restaurant. It’s a recipe for heartbreak and disaster, because there simply won’t be enough people to keep these multiple businesses afloat. On the other hand, when you do your homework in this important area, you start out ahead, with built-in interest – you’re in demand!
Comparable Sales
Although as we said, we don’t want oversaturated markets, we will look at similar businesses over a geographic range and use their sales to create comparable sales models. From there we can make projections of what you’re likely to take in over the years to come.
All of this work is enormously important in supporting an initial business plan. Don’t go in blind. Talk to Emerald Coast about a solid foundation for your restaurant.