Finally opened me up one small shop.

[Soulrize]

After graduation and a small vacation to my home country, I found out real quickly how useful my degree was for securing a job. I didn't land noting and put out plenty of applications and improved my application skills to the max. I ended up deciding after much talk to partner up with my aunt and open a donut shop. The total capital was 100k and I am in charge of operations and make all decisions about the direction of the business. While the responsibility is high, I always wanted to take the plunge and prove to myself that I'm not a lazy, living of my parents' gamer. Its a 7 day a week job and exactly how it sounds in MJ book.
The greatest Pro's so far
*Already established and profitable
*Have tremendous help from my aunt side of the family in terms of maintenance and any hands-on things that would have come out of pocket.
*I'm allowed to execute any ideas I have about the business as long as I communicate why.

And comes the Con's
*My aunts objective is to give her daughter in law a job so we are overstaffed and were near a break even.
*My motivation levels and execution levels are too sporadic and I have personal highs and lows .

I'm a big believer that I can do anything and in this situation, my main and frontal focus is to increase sales to a point where I can be profitable with my current overhead as well and increase compacity usage of the business.
I'm at an advantage because I come from a donut shop background growing up and most if not 99% of the other owned donut shop in my town are owned and run by my parents' generation and rarely if ever innovate anything.

I so far am just integrating into the donut shop and making my face known,

So far What I've done that has differentiated from other shops (but not yet increased sales or profit as far as I can see)
*Installed POS systems to track sales of individual items
*Introduced a new Kolache into the shop called the meat lover for a hungry class of customer (as well as a small advertising sign for it )
*Asked and listened to customers complaints and adapted some suggestions from customers


In the pipeline
*Creating business cards with free delivery into the area for order over 20(trying to make convenience to customers to overtake competitors)
*Deliver to local churches, Schools (15 just within 5 miles) , and hospitals to make my business known as well as give them freebies (or I've been thinking of giving them 20 dollar gift certificates so that why they can choose what they want and the will come to me when they are in need )
*making picture menu for easy to pick options for customers
*advertise our frappe and other drink items that we make there beyond donuts

I have to say I post because some days I'm so filled with energy to do do do , and others I just want to get home and sleep. I can do all these things its just an energy problem. Any suggestions for fixing that?

 

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[minivanman]

I don't know about your area but we have donut shops on every block and some blocks have 2 or 3..... no joke! Just down the road we have 3 within 1/4 of a mile from each other. The problem with ours is that they are all closed before noon. I'm not sure if they did any research or just saw that the donut shop that has been here since 1960 closes at 11am so we better close at 11am also <<<<< I'm betting it's something more along the lines of that than actually doing any testing. No clue even what town or country you are in but in my area QT has probably put a hurting on the donut shops.

Try a square donut, it might get a little talk started about your shop. How come no one ever has chocolate chip donuts? If she serves as an 'extra' person that is getting paid, have her run curbside service for regular customers. Do you have an app? Can they order through Uber Eats or anything like that? Like I said.... no clue where you are at or if y'all have anything like that.

Hopefully it makes you lots of profit.

 

[Soulrize]

So Its been a while since I posted and started the business. (MJ Post inspired an update) I have thought alot about about the post on open later hours and right now our sales arn't at a level to even support our current staff for opening 8 hours .
So with that said my main focus is sales and a few things I have done to improve it
- Created a special design donut that changes everyday to fit one of my creative workers and let them an outlet to work on.
kids have enjoyed this and some come to my shop , quite religiously telling their parents this shop is the only place to go.
- Introduced the POS system and cut out drinks and products that have low to no turnover.
- Introduced Kolaches for bigger adults jam-packed with meat
-Added fresh milk for our coffee as well as change the coffee machine to make small batches of coffee for fresh turn over vs a whole half gallon we used to use to sell for the whole day (sales of coffee increased a few cups a day )
- Visited local schools and made myself and my business known to them 3 times in one month (received a few teachers from each school )
-Joined food delivery sites, took fantastic photos of my product, and created a few descriptions for our savory items.
-Created instagram and facebook profiles

Things I have done to streamline my personal side to the business
-List ,list,list , I create a list every sunday for every inventory and take Tuesday to go buy everything for the week, (use to go every day to get a few things here and there) and leave Wednesday for food deliveries .
- Teaching more to my employees and getting them started on projects

Things in the pipeline I'm working on
- Mixing new in ingredients with our glaze recipe we used for 15 years and looking to make it the best
- leaning to make sausage and working on making our exclusive line of sausage kolaches
- Pumpkin spice donut (recipe created just have to put it in the front to sell tomorrow)
- Creating posters to advertise some of our food items not easily seen from the front of the shop
- Logo design and brand creating with a focus on family time for my shop. I personally enjoy seeing families come together and enjoy there food and spend there time in my shop.
- settingg the logo on our box and cups
-Going to ther other 14 schools, 5 churches, and 3 hospitals to introduce myself and my product relentlessly.
- Creating google ads ( have no clue but i'll put some money at it )(would take suggestions or help on this one )
- adding a digital menu instead of our old, dusty, hideous menu.
- Fresh paint job by the end of the month
-Rearrange the front for better display of all our product and quicker service by adjusting the flow of traffic.
-creating enticing descriptions on my food delivery sites
- Creating my own website

That list is exausting haha. Well, I hope to hear some input on it especially if you have any lengthy experience with any of these processes.
Thank you guys

 

[AFMKelvin]

A place for people to hang out if you have the space. Include couches, chairs, tables and bar stools. There's a coffee shop in my city that's always jammed packed with kids drinking and eating while on their laptops. No lie there's also a line everytime I go there.

If you need help with the adwords I'll be happy to do it for you. DM if you need more info.

 

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[Soulrize]

AN update - So the business problems I face now is that I must cut all projects i'm doing to improve the shop that cost money. So I stepped up my efforts and my employee efforts to increase traffic in Instagram, food deliveries, and streamline oriented projects that are done daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly. I also have stepped up my efforts equally higher showing support for my employees as well as undertaking more operations work as one of our employees is in there 7 month of pregnancy and can't work as she would normally, she says she will also be working until delivery so I have planned for that by giving her more computer-oriented task than labor.
We Have sales goals since the beginning of this month and I've been pounding away at ideas, advertising, and finding ways to get things done and yesterday we were super close to our daily sales goal through all the efforts everyone was putting in.

 

[TheCj]

Not sure how it is where ever you are located, but I notice a lot of the mom and pop stores/places don't offer free wifi. As opposed to the bigger franchises that do offer free wifi.

 

[Soulrize]

Not sure how it is where ever you are located, but I notice a lot of the mom and pop stores/places don't offer free wifi. As opposed to the bigger franchises that do offer free wifi.

I have considered it but as earlier we have a problem that we close at 1pm (what previous owner did as well as norm for the whole city for unbranded shops ) and no one comes and sits during the busiest time of the day besides family's (family time ) and middle school students ( near middle school ) . It wouldn't have value unless I opened untill 10 maybe 11 pm . I face the problem such as worried about the freshness( or customers perception of freshness more like ) for our products . as well as hiring another shift to make it possible. I do believe it would work if we can do it and maintain it for a couple of years to gain traction. I do think about moving beyond the traditional setup norm of similar businesses which is they have everything out on display. More towards digital menu with pictures of all products (or some at least ) and not have to display all products in the front were they spoil.

 

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[Zarar]

Good job I am sure it will get better!

 

[Soulrize]

I'm working on growing revenue as my profits are low due to me hiring employees to take care of the day to day and free myself to foucs on finding new customers or ways to evolve and showcase my products. Is there any suggestions in books or practices I can do from a small business standpoint to increase revenue. Just yesterday I went to two apartment complexes nearby and offered free delivery and catering to events they were having, it got me known and for sure one customer. They also asked for a brochure which I'm finishing today to produce and give to them. Any books on succeeding in the food industry as a quick serve?

 

[YoungPadawan]

No food industry books I can think of .but an excellent book you may want to check out is 'getting everything you can out of all you've got' by Jay Abraham.

 

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[Vanesco]

I also opened my own small online store. Every month sales increase and if everything goes at that pace, I will open a real store.

 

[DVU]

Heres an idea:

Figure out something you can do to attract local news. A lot of free exposure if you are creative. A good book on this is Trust me I'm lying by Ryan Holiday

And that hiring of relatives just so they have a job, holy shit I would not tolerate that. Sit down with them and tell them to GTFO if they are extra.

 

[ManlyMansNegator]

Have you tried Uber Eats? My dads shop just made 3x sales from selling on uber eats.The fees are high but the marketing through word of mouth and Uber eats is genius.

 

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[Soulrize]

No food industry books I can think of .but an excellent book you may want to check out is 'getting everything you can out of all you've got' by Jay Abraham.

Heres an idea:

Figure out something you can do to attract local news. A lot of free exposure if you are creative. A good book on this is Trust me I'm lying by Ryan Holiday

And that hiring of relatives just so they have a job, holy sh*t I would not tolerate that. Sit down with them and tell them to GTFO if they are extra.

Im reading the first book getting everything you can out of all you got, I'll hop into this one right after.

So one of them is pregnant so they will take a leave in December, and likely January as well. I talked to my partner and kept the cost as minimal but I still have to use them. I instead push them to do more which they are completely capable of , foucsing on meeting daily sales targets, # of transactions, and higher average cost of transactions . Many ways we will achieve this is by making our donuts better, creating a points program for loyal customers using phone #, and creating a brochure so I can better sell my offering to nearby Rental apartments and schools.

Have you tried Uber Eats? My dads shop just made 3x sales from selling on uber eats.The fees are high but the marketing through word of mouth and Uber eats is genius.

So far I have GrubHub and Doordash, Doordash is generating about a days worth of extra sales a month and of course, it isn't too profitable but at least it gets our product and name into the hands of clients is how i see it. Plus being the first to implement it is an advantage for us since we are the only place offering breakfast (donuts, kolaches, croissants, breakfast tacos) in my area on these platforms.

 

[Areding]

I also planned to open my small shop, but I still can’t decide on a niche. I thought I would open a second-hand shop or a plumbing shop. What do you think will be more profitable?