Location for restaurant

The location is an essential factor to consider while discussing how to start a restaurant business, as it can determine the success of your restaurant. Depending on how much money you have to invest in your food-service business and the particular type of business you choose, you can spend anywhere between $70,000 and $1.5 million on a facility.It makes sense to take your time, as you’re looking for the right space. You might also want to do some research to find out of there are any startup incubator spaces for restaurants that you can join to keep initial costs low and that might come with mentorship opportunities. Whether you decide to rent space or build from scratch, selecting a location is one of the biggest decisions you’ll make as an owner. But you don’t have to do a huge build out at first.

Not every food-service operation needs to be in a retail location, but for those that do depend on retail traffic, here are some factors to consider when deciding on a location:

• Anticipated sales volume. How will the location contribute to your sales volume?

• Competitor. While choosing your restaurant’s location, it is a good idea to identify your competitor in that area and gauge their progress and understand their business model. The competition needs to be assessed not just in terms of cuisine, but also the type of dining experience they are offering to their customers – casual dining, fine dining, QSR, etc. Evaluating the competition would help you understand the customer base that hovers in that area, their pocket size, and their preferences.

• Accessibility to potential customers. Consider how easy it will be for customers to get into your business. If you are relying on strong pedestrian traffic, consider whether or not nearby businesses will generate foot traffic for you.

• The rent-paying capacity of your business. If you've done a sales-and-profit projection for your first year of operation, you will know approximately how much revenue you can expect to generate, and you can use that information to decide how much rent you can afford to pay When it comes to the location of your restaurant you will need to determine whether or not you want to rent or buy the location. Buying will cost you more initially, but it may increase your profitability later down the road. On the other hand you may find after being open for a few months a better location is elsewhere in your city, thus renting gives you the flexibility to move around if needed to increase profits.

• Restrictive ordinances. You may encounter unusually restrictive ordinances that make an otherwise strong site less than ideal, such as limitations on the hours of the day that trucks can legally load or unload.

• Traffic density. With careful examination of food traffic, you can determine the approximate sales potential of each pedestrian passing a given location. Two factors are especially important in this analysis: total pedestrian traffic during business hours and the percentage of it that is likely to patronize your food service business.

• Customer parking facilities. The site should provide convenient, adequate parking as well as easy access for customers.

• Proximity to other businesses. Neighboring businesses may influence your store's volume, and their presence can work for you or against you.

• History of the site. Find out the recent history of each site under consideration before you make a final selection. Who were the previous tenants, and why are they no longer there?

• Terms of the lease. Be sure you understand all the details of the lease, because it's possible that an excellent site may have unacceptable leasing terms.

• Future development. Check with the local planning board to see if anything is planned for the future that could affect your business, such as additional buildings nearby or road construction.