PowerSwitch

Someone approached me to open a grocery/convienence store. The store will also have a butchers section.

Is this really a good time to open this type of store now, and invest £20,000 into it? Is a grocery store gonna be ok for the future if TSHTF?

I have been thinking that if TSHTF then the value of the pound will be worthless anyway, so unless I had it in gold or something, theres no point in me having £10,000 cash, I may as well try a business with it?

At the end of the day people are always gonna need food, right? Especially if I could get relatively local produced fruit and veg and meat, right?

Location, location, location.

(Is it next door to Tesco?)

agreed location is an important factor. What sort of location do you recommend? And is location the only important factor when keeping in mind what could happen if TSHTF?

Seriously, I have learnt quite a bit about it over the last few months with the launch of my daughter's shop.

Starting a food shop is a very complicated and difficult and risky affair, which can be great fun and very rewarding if you get it right. There are many ways of getting it wrong. You need to do a great deal of homework.

I would strongly suggest you start be spending a few hours reading everything, including the big downloads, on this website: http://www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk/

Expect to work hard for long hours and not get rich.
And remember Plan B is you run the Community Soup Kitchen.
Have fun.

thanks for the advice. I understand it is not gong to be easy and also i won't get rich. My biggest concern however is what will happen in the future. Will the credit crisis or peak oil kill off most shops like this, or are they the sort of businesses that will survive?

Are you going to be better at providing what the customers want than other shopkeepers?

As others point out it is not easy to run a food shop, numerous laws, rules and regulations have to be complied with, at least while times are more or less normal.
You are unlikely to get rich running such a business.

On the other hand eating is not going out of fashion! and small owner operated shops may be better placed to survive the hard times ahead than large supermarkets.

Consider keeping a larger stock of food (relative to turnover) than supermarkets with theire JIT deliveries. This could be very valuable indeed to you and your customers in the event of supply disruptions.

Also consider stocking a basic range of non food items, especialy those that the less-prepared may want at short notice in case of powercuts etc.
candles, batteries, cheap battery radios, torches, battery and oil lanterns, pre-pack parrafin etc.

Remember that theft and robbery may become more of a problem, consider security from the begining (strong doors, good locks, security grilles or shutters, a decent hidden safe for cash etc.)

Since you will almost certainly require electricity for refrigeration, and probably also for lighting, cash registers, and a computer, consider a standby diesel generator from the begining.

And in case of TEOTWAWKI the contents of a shop can feed you and your family for a long time. (in case of looting or official seizure of your goods, consider a large hidden stash of food in some secure place, possibly of the premises. Rotate this stock via the shop to avoid it going out of date.)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7665515.stm

Maybe hang fire for a bit

Would a mobile business be a better option? The costs of setting up and running a shop are pretty horrendous, and you're stuck with the location. Maybe a niche market in delivering groceries to people who want something different to supermarkets is worth investigating. You then just need storage in a cheap/secure location and a van/horse and cart/delivery bike. I worked from home for years, rather than renting office space, and it kept my costs far lower, and I could move location easily.

biffvernon wrote:Seriously, I have learnt quite a bit about it over the last few months with the launch of my daughter's shop.

Hah - a soup kitchen!

Yeah, it's all part of Plan B. We've got a wwoofer staying at the moment, extending the veg plot so we can supply the shop with soup ingredients.