How hard could it be? Cart-based sales from the Lido beach

This postcard comes to us courtesy of Ronnie Norris: "This cart provided a service to a large number of people on the beach. The selling point of the cart was the fact it was closer and easier to access than the shops across the street off the beach. This is a very simple service selling products that don't cost much money, I can not image the cart has much up keep/ maintenance issues. Good business idea. He could grow the business by setting up the same cart around the island, on beaches and corners."


Do you want to start your own restaurant? Before you launch into the full restaurant model, think about how you can make a name for yourself with as little fixed costs as possible. For many aspiring chefs, this means offering your services as a chef-for-hire or caterer for parties. If you have a replicable model based on a few compelling food offerings that can be made ahead of time and presented to customers, you might want to think about the food cart route. Virtually all of my students have heard me pitch my idea for "Crimson Dogs" on home-game Saturdays. You might find that the catering gig or your replicable cart business is more fun and more profitable than running a "real" restaurant. Thanks, Ronnie!


For anyone who wasn't fixed in a trance-like state by the Adriatic waves, check out the menu prices for individual items, buy both a food and appropriate beverage product, then count how many customers the cart vendor sells to over the course of the day. You will be witnessing first-hand how people solve their "big pain" of not having some food or drink to accompany their day at the beach.

How to turn kababs into gold in Venice

Nearly all of us have discovered the value of the close, fast, and delicious Kabab restaurant around the corner from the beautiful and peaceful Hotel Nuove Mestre. Have you thought about how the owners and managers of this store might run this business profitably? This restaurant is not in the heart (or even the chest cavity) of Venice, yet it draws satisfied customers consistently each day. How much in revenues do you think this place takes in each day? (# of customers X sales per customer / day). E.g., 150 customers X 6 euro = 900 euro. Subtract out wages (100 euro?), cost of goods sold (100 euro?), and fixed costs (rent, utilities, insurance, maybe 50 euro) and you have 650 euro profit. If my average sales per customer goes up by just one euro, then my profit for the day is 800. Just some back-of-the-envelope stuff, but you can quickly do some numbers to see how kebabs can turn into gold. The purpose of the exercise is not to reverse-engineer the numbers to complete accuracy, but to gain an understanding about the moving parts - revenues per customer, number of customers, additional incremental revenues, cost of goods sold, and fixed costs - that make or break a small business.


Thanks to Andrew Slusser for putting down his gyro long enough to take this picture!