Tag: restaurant feasability study

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.

At Emerald Coast Restaurant Brokers and Consultants, we help restaurant businesses to stay alive and thriving in a competitive market. As a brokerage, we help these businesses to change hands, but as a premier consulting service, we also help to ensure that they are in good shape to be passed on at some time in the future.

 

One of the things that we do for restaurants involves conducting feasibility studies that will provide a window into the business as a whole, and help chart a course for the future.

 

Feasibility studies are often used by large corporations or municipalities to determine what to do with assets and operations. It’s the same way for restaurants – a careful evaluation and enumeration of assets helps business leaders to plan.

 

What’s in a feasibility study? Here are some of the things that provide value as we conduct this type of research for restaurants.

 

Guest Profiles

 

Part of the work of the restaurant feasibility study goes into the customer – determining what the target audience is. We include demographic information that helps with a comprehensive guest profile that will show how the business matches demand, and how it attracts its core constituency of patrons, or in other words, the customer base. This direct kind of correspondence is a valuable part of the research that we do for restaurant clients.

 

Comparative Studies

 

You may have heard of comparable or comparative studies in the real estate world, where real estate agents look in detail at properties that tend to reflect the same kinds of value according to their build, location and other factors.

 

These comparative studies are also important in a feasibility study, and they’re useful for buying and selling as well. Part of our reputation rests on the quality of our comparable reports and what we provide to clients in that segment.

 

General Market Research

 

Parts of our feasibility studies look at the environment that the restaurant is operating in, to figure out whether the business is doing well, and how it can do better. This is where we look at what’s being bought and sold in the local area, and the impact that has on both core sales and customer psychology.

 

In addition, there are a number of on-site operational aspects that have to be cataloged in a feasibility study. Menu costing is a prime example – your food costs are a core part of your business accounting, and one part of the business vitally affects another.

 

Ask us about the feasibility studies that we do for restaurants and what these research processes can do for your business.