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Choosing The Perfect New Building For Your Restaurant

Are you interested in setting up a restaurant? If so, then there’s a key ingredient that you have to get right to guarantee your success. You must ensure that you choose the perfect building for this new business. Here are some key factors you must take into account making this decision.

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article | Choosing The Perfect New Building For Your Restaurant

Location

First, you should think about the location of your restaurant. Location is key when it comes to getting the right level of foot traffic. If you choose the wrong location, then your restaurant will already be destined to struggle. When looking at the location, consider aspects such as transport links. Your restaurant needs to be accessible to as many people as possible. Don’t fall into the trap of choosing a building that looks great but there’s nothing around. People aren’t going to drive out of the way to take a chance on a new restaurant. It needs to have a local base of customers ready to bite.

Exterior

You need to look at the exterior of the property as well. This is important as without the right aesthetic and curb appeal, you will struggle to build up the right level of foot traffic for your restaurant to be a success.

You can of course buy a building and then spend time improving the exterior. But there will be buildings that already have a beautiful outside and a modern design. This guaranteed to help you attract customers once you are ready to open the doors of your restaurant.


Facilities

Next, you should think about the facilities that are available in the restaurant. For instance, you should consider whether you require a cold storage area. Depending on the food that you are serving, this could be essential. You may also need to buy equipment and convert a space using solutions such as a sliding door cooler. In terms of other facilities, your restaurant will require two restrooms or spaces that can be adapted for this.

This is one of the reasons why the cost of the building is just the beginning. Once you buy or rent a property, you will need to spend time and money adapting it to match the requirements of your new business venture.

Space

Finally, you need to think about the space that a building will provide. No one wants to eat in a cramped restaurant and a small space can also throw off the vibe of an area. It’s important to think about the capacity that you want or expect for your restaurant and ensure that you have the space to match. Don’t forget, a lot of businesses will expand their space by adding outdoor areas. However, this will be seasonal and you’ll also likely need planning permission to add an area like this once your restaurant is up and running.

We hope this helps you understand some of the key points that you should consider when choosing the right building for your exciting, fresh restaurant. In doing so, you can guarantee that you do attract customer interest and easily hit profitability in your first year.

Avoiding The Expenses Of Constantly Buying New Business Furniture

StrategyDriven Risk Management Article |Business Furniture|Avoiding The Expenses Of Constantly Buying New Business FurnitureYou want to ensure that you’re providing the maintenance and care that your workplace needs to ensure that your employees, as well as any clients, customers, or partners that visit, are able to do their thing safely and without concern. At some point, replacing old furniture might be a necessary step to take. However, if you find yourself having to buy a lot of furniture, whether it’s for the office or more industrial spaces, it can quickly become expensive. As such, here are a few steps you can take to reduce the expense of it all.

Give them the preventative maintenance they need

As with every other part of your office, your furniture is going to require preventative maintenance as well. If you spot some problems early, then you might be able to stop them from becoming bigger issues with a replacement part or, in many cases with chairs and the like, a drop of oil. Furniture that might be used in open-air spaces can require a little more work. For instance, wood furniture might need to be refinished and re-sealed to ensure that it doesn’t succumb to environmental pressures like moisture and sunlight. Fit your furniture into your maintenance schedule alongside the rest of the property to protect it for much longer.

Know when you can make the fixes they need

Prevention is the key, but even if you’re starting to see problems with your furniture, that doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to replace the entire piece of furniture just yet. Loose rungs on the share can be fixed by regluing them in place, while you can add braces to chairs that might be getting a little wobbly as their joints come loose. Even metal furniture can be protected, with the help of things like industrial grinders to smooth down and restore the surface of metal objects that are getting dull or showing the signs of age. Having the ability to show a little care to your furniture can help you keep it looking and feeling perfectly fine for years to come, instead of having to replace it at the first sign of trouble.

Don’t buy first-hand when you don’t need to

Sometimes, you simply are going to need a replacement and there’s nothing else to be said about the matter. When that happens, going to your local manufacturer or supplier might not always be the right decision. There are plenty of places to buy second-hand furniture for the office and many of these providers will even offer then refurbished, meaning that they have taken care to ensure that they are safe and working, and might have even fixed some of the surface-level signs of wear and tear that they have accumulated. Of course, if you buy second-hand furniture and it doesn’t match your quality standards, then you shouldn’t buy from that place again.

With the tips above, hopefully, you can help everything in the office last just a bit longer and, when it can’t, maybe you can find more sensible replacements that are better for your bottom line.

6 Huge Benefits of Commercial Real Estate Software

StrategyDriven Managing Your Business Article |Commercial Real Estate|6 Huge Benefits of Commercial Real Estate SoftwareThe commercial real estate industry is one of the largest industries in the world. It is estimated to be worth over $32 trillion.

Due to the enormous size of the industry, many people aspire to get in on the opportunities that it provides. Around 90% of the world’s millionaires created over the last 200 years made their wealth by investing in real estate. There are still plenty of opportunities to make money with commercial real estate.

However, the industry is also incredibly competitive. In order to thrive, you need to invest in all of the best tools available. There are a number of great commercial software applications that are worth exploring.

What are the benefits of using commercial software like www.northshoresystems.com? Some of the biggest are listed below.

More organized finances

Financial mistakes are the downfall of almost all failed real estate entrepreneurs. You must keep track of outstanding loan obligations, cash flow situations, projected property values, outstanding debt, expenses and revenue projections.

Merely keeping track of all of this data can be overwhelming by itself. Compiling the data and making associations between different figures to make sensible decisions is even more challenging.

This is one of the reasons that commercial real estate management software is so important. You can easily track all of your expenses and other financial data. You will also have access to sophisticated tools that make it easier to manage all of your finances in one place. You can save countless hours on financial management and make far fewer costly mistakes.

Accept payments from tenants online

One of the biggest problems that any property owner must deal with is collecting payments from tenants. It can be a frustrating part of the job, but it is something that you have to take very seriously. Around 82% of all business failures are due to cash flow problems. This statistic holds true for the real estate industry. Cash flow problems are primarily due to failure to get rent from tenants on a timely basis.

Of course, many tenants fall behind on rent due to their own financial problems. There isn’t too much you can do in the situation, because you can’t squeeze blood from a stone. However, other tenants don’t pay their rent on time because there isn’t a convenient way to do so. This is especially true for businesses that are headquartered overseas or even in other states.

Commercial real estate software makes it a lot easier for companies to keep up with their rent. They can pay through online payment systems instead of sending a check or making a bank transfer. This simplifies the process for everybody.

Improve tenant satisfaction

There are a lot of tasks that property owners and managers must take care of to keep their tenants satisfied. This can include everything from making sure plumbing issues are taken care of to maximizing the security of the property.

Real estate property software makes it a lot easier to complete these tasks. You can track what needs to be done, provide an online system for filing requests to take care of projects, assign tasks to various employees and organize workflows in the most efficient way possible.

All of these features make it a lot easier to give the tenants the support that they need. This in turn maximizes tenant satisfaction.

Access information remotely

Real estate owners have to travel frequently and often have properties all over the country or even all over the world. However, their problems don’t disappear when they are away from the location in question. They need access to relevant information to properly address the problems they are facing.
Fortunately, commercial real estate software makes it easier to access the information that you need. You will be able to store important data on the cloud and review it from anywhere in the world.

Improving compliance

Regulatory compliance is a very important aspect of managing any business. The commercial real estate industry has a massive number of regulations that all property owners will have to abide by.

You can’t afford to be lax about compliance issues. The good news is that commercial real estate software makes it a lot easier to adhere to them.

Minimizing vacancy rates

High vacancy rates can be the death of any real estate business. You need to do everything possible to keep your properties filled with paying customers.
Commercial real estate software makes it a lot easier to accomplish this. you can track your properties more easily and make sure you know which available units to market.

Where your company is headquartered makes a big difference to your bottom line

Where a business is headquartered can make a huge difference in the skill level of your employees, raising capital and attracting customers. This time of a year is an important reminder that where your company is headquartered also can have a significant impact on your bottom line.

For startups deciding where to establish roots or for growing companies looking to relocate, these factors should be top of mind when deciding on home base, since corporate taxes differ greatly by state. As the Tax Foundation notes, for example, some states have no traditional corporate income tax (like Texas, Nevada and Colorado), while Alaska collects a whopping $993 per capita.

And while taxes are not the only consideration a company should give when deciding where to locate, the significant variance can affect the bottom line by a substantial amount and has led to an influx of companies moving into lower-taxed locales.


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About the Author

Craig CasselberryCraig Casselberry is the founder and president of Austin-based Quorum Public Affairs, Inc., where he has managed more than 100 strategic communications projects for half of the Fortune 50 companies, issue coalitions, and federal, state and local public policy campaigns for corporate clients of all sizes. As a 20-year-veteran of the Texas political and business communities, Craig is a sought-after speaker and consultant, advising firms like AT&T, FedEx, Dell and Ford as well as early-stage companies on their growth strategies in Texas.