Looking to get your foot in the door and start your own food business? Debating if you should take the food truck or restaurant path? The food truck environment can come as a surprise. Initial setup costs aside, opting for the more traditional brick-and-mortar store has some comparatively attractive benefits. Ask your self factors such as, where do I want to start this? Or How much money do I have to invest.

Key Takeaways:

• The days when food trucks were associated with grungy building sites and fried food at the fair are long gone. These flexible small business ventures are recognized as an exciting and viable option for foodies wanting to follow their dreams.
• Generating ideas will help you to focus on why you are starting a business, and it pays to take in the bigger picture before narrowing back to your strengths. The process of refining your idea will help with deciding whether you opt for a food truck or a restaurant.
• Starting a restaurant from scratch on a shoestring can be done, but when the reclaimed tables you want are difficult to source and extraction fans cost more than expected, expenses can quickly spiral out of control. Investing in an established business can be prohibitive as you’re paying for stock and the existing client base.

“This is where you should be asking yourself the big questions—such as what you’re looking for in a business. Running a business is as much a lifestyle choice as it is a career path, and the lifestyle that comes with running a food truck is very different from the lifestyle that comes with running a restaurant.”

http://www.restaurantnews.com/restaurant-or-food-truck-which-is-better-for-a-beginner/

It seems like it can be hard for some businesses to perform well, especially during the festive season — even if it seems like it should be easier due to the lure of all of those crowds. Restaurants and pubs have it especially hard, but they both seemed to do well over the holidays — all through the country. “Chain restaurants and pubs given festive uplift” has the statistics.

Key Takeaways:

• Both restaurants and pubs fared equally well in the six weeks of festive trading to 8 January although drinks-led pub and bar businesses generally out-performed food-led operations, the tracker found.
• The sales rise was led by operators in London where collective like-for-like sales were up 5.1 per cent compared to 1.2 per cent for the rest of the UK.
• The uplift for eating and drinking out also mirrors the upswing in retail sales for the period, showing that spending was on both in-home and out-of-home entertainment.

“Both restaurants and pubs fared equally well in the six weeks of festive trading to 8 January although drinks-led pub and bar businesses generally out-performed food-led operations, the tracker found.”

http://www.bighospitality.co.uk/Business/Chain-restaurants-and-pubs-given-festive-uplift?utm_source=RSS_text_news&utm_medium=RSS_feed&utm_campaign=RSS_Text_News