Food & Grocery What is the best business location? [URGENT Help!!]

Hello,

I would like to ask for your insights in choosing the best location for my business.
Nature of Business: Snack station

Location 1:

• Retail shopping center that houses various stalls for rents
• Many types of business including other snack and resto competitors
• Within the center of Dumaguete
• Shopping center near the road but my store space is at the end part of the complex
• Monthly payment: 6K per month

Location 2:

• Banilad, Dumaguete along the highway going to Bacong
• No competitors for snack station neighboring businesses are "carinderias"
• I still have to construct a small store but will be using cheap materials such as corrugated iron instead of cement
• Monthly payment: 3k per month

I hope you can help me decide which location to choose.

Thank you and hoping for your insights.

- Lloyd

 

I have owned and run several businesses from small to large, wholesale and retail, including a small restaurant. Only you can decide which location you want to use but here is what I would recommend you consider.
Snacks are not something people seek out. They are impulse and you need foot traffic or a slow traffic area. In the restaurant business surrounding competitors actually helped business. I would assume it would be the same in the snack business. You need to spend some time monitoring each location for "traffic count" at the snack time of day. Middle of the morning, middle of the affternoon, and evening. Of course Filipino I guess is 24/7 lol. Location and exposure is everything in retail. You need to have the biggest "face" (signage and display) to the traffic as you can and go with the higher foot traffic location.

 

I can't comment specifically on the locations you mentioned, but my asawa says for snacks it would be good to be located near a school.

 

Thank you so much for sharing your experience! I really appreciate your insights!

 

Thank you! I was also considering the monthly rent with only 3k per month for location 2 but I think foot traffic is low.

 

Thanks, it is difficult to find vacant areas near schools.

 

Mainly I guess because some have had that Forethought already and seem to have acted on it, you mention bacong, did you give Valencia a thought

 

Agree, Sister In-law and her Hubby cook Doughnuts here (5php ea) at home and deliver each morning to a couple of the local schools here, they pull in around 700php a day if sold out, not much for a foreigner but a healthy income for a Filipino. If there was a much wider variety of foods then I could see a location, especially within walking distance to a High School, working out quiet well...