“Starting a Grocery Store Business”
Comment Page 2

I'd like to provide some of those numbers every body here seems to be looking for. First of all, if you want to be a hands off manager and work on the business and not in it you should be planning on an after tax margin of 1.84% and sorry folks that isn't a typo. Next, the average grocery super market is 46,755 square feet. Not that there aren't a lot of much smaller grocery stores that do really well. However, on a weekly basis you should expect to gross about $11.39 per square foot with a sales per labor hour of about $145. So a 6000 square foot grocery will generate about $68,340 per week. (These numbers by the way are for the US or Canada.) It will take you 471 labor hours. In other words a staff of almost twelve people at a cost of around $10,000 per week. What will you make if you don't work in the store yourself, $1260. If you do manage it yourself then figure somewhere around $2,000-$2,500 a week. How much is such a store worth? Take the owners draw ($1260)* 52 weeks * 4 years = $262,000. Try to keep this in mind, grocery is about huge volumes per square foot and tiny margins. You can't be making mistakes. This isn't a good business for anybody who hasn't come from the grocery trade. Product mix, product placement, open hours, your neighborhood demographics, adequate parking, decent rents, etc. all are key factors. Take, for example, store layout. If you want to cater to the low end of the market place you want to keep your loss leaders and most popular items at the back of the store, however if you are catering to a high end client and trying to maximize your markup then you want lots of open space, maybe a coffee bar, even live entertainment. I teach entrepreneurship. You can check out my website at www.wildmaninstitute.org if you like. I have helped a number of students start grocery stores and am actually helping one right now start a new concept store (20,000 sq ft) in Edmonton, Alberta where I live. It is a very tough business. I'd urge you all to ask yourself why this business? Why not something else? As for people with bad credit, there is always a way. People are welcome to contact me at dennis@wildmaninstitute.org No I am not trying to sell you anything. I'll help if I can.

We r an Indian co. named NTC , want to set up Fresh , Green Vegetable shop Business in UK which can Import & Export , wholesale Vegetable. Pls give me detail with Low Cost rented shop , fooding , lodging , taxes , other rules & regulation & other if needed .

I enjoy hearing from people who are passionate about their vision in the food retail industry. I have extensive retail experience in multi-national Supermarket Groups in South Africa and Africa in both operations and development. Some advice that comes to mind based on some of the comments that I have read:

- you MUST have a passion for retail and food
- location, location, location (need I say more!)
- understand your market (there are companies out there that do gap analysis)
- you need to understand your customer AND your competitors
- you need to look for opportunities within your own market and capitalize on this
- retail is detail, therefore open your store every day as if you were opening for the first time
- a good foundation is important, i.e. the set up of your store, design, customer flow, category flow, etc.
- it is a huge operation to set-up a store, so to reduce start-up costs and also co-ordinate all the necessary professionals, contractors etc., utilize the skills of professionals in the industry, such as a retail project manager.
You are welcome to chat further via e-mail.